Robust and reliable measures of consumer expenditures are essential for analyzing aggregate economic activity and for measuring differences in household circumstances. Many countries, including the United States, are embarking on ambitious projects to redesign surveys of consumer expenditures, with the goal of better capturing economic heterogeneity. This is an appropriate time to examine the way consumer expenditures are currently measured, and the challenges and opportunities that alternative approaches might present.      

Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures begins with a comprehensive review of current methodologies for collecting consumer expenditure data. Subsequent chapters highlight the range of different objectives that expenditure surveys may satisfy, compare the data available from consumer expenditure surveys with that available from other sources, and describe how the United States’s current survey practices compare with those in other nations.

Over the past thirty years, the government has spent approximately $1.5 billion on the Regional Educational Laboratories and $1.1 billion on the Research and Development Centers. After this large investment, these two research facilities still have been unable to find the best way to effectively help at-risk children thrive in school. Many people are slowly realizing that, unfortunately, our sizable investment in educational research and development has not been sufficient to produce the kind of information that policymakers and educators must have if they hope to meet the needs of these at-risk children.
Maris A. Vinovskis uses the research he has done over the past decade, along with the findings of other policymakers, to argue that the American public school system needs to gain functional reform if research institutions are to conduct more effective studies for policymakers. He examines here both recent reform policies as well as the history behind educational reform.
Vinovskis's vigorous investigation of the process of educational research and development in the United States will be of particular interest to individuals whose careers depend on continued federal funding. This book will also appeal to educators, policymakers, and public policy analysts and will be of unequaled value in understanding the formulation of new educational policies in the twenty-first century.
Maris A. Vinovskis is active on Capitol Hill and lectures throughout the country at such prestigious institutions as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Brookings Institution, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He is Professor of History, University of Michigan.