International economic statistics play central roles in global economic governance. Governments and international organizations rely on them to monitor international economic agreements; governments use them to understand potential imbalances in bilateral relationships; and international investors build their country assessments on such data. These statistics increasingly suffer from serious defects, however, due to globalization, the digitization of our economies, and the prominence of secrecy jurisdictions and multinational corporations. For that reason, economic data is not a neutral arbiter in international affairs. Instead, it suffers from four kinds of bias: Expert attention bias means that the objects of measurement—what they are meant to capture—depend on the preoccupations of the small circle of statistical experts. Countability bias skews economic figures in favor of countable objects and away from, for example, unremunerated labor and production as well as ephemeral economic process, such as knowledge production. Capitalist bias emerges because economic statistics naturalize unequal power relations in the global economy: They mistake a country’s inability to fetch high prices for its products for low productivity and a lack of added value. Stealth - wealth bias , finally, means that statistics naturalize the distorted image we have of the global economy as corporations and individual hide profits and wealth in secrecy jurisdictions. This article cautions against an insufficiently critical use of statistics in international affairs. And it encourages policymakers to “know thy data” lest biases in the numbers generate skewed policies, unnecessary disputes and a gradual delegitimization of statistics in general.

中文翻译：

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国际经济统计：全球事务中的偏向仲裁者？

国际经济统计在全球经济治理中发挥着核心作用。各国政府和国际组织依靠它们监测国际经济协定；政府使用它们来了解双边关系中的潜在失衡；而国际投资者则根据此类数据进行国家评估。但是，由于全球化，我们的经济数字化以及保密管辖权和跨国公司的突出地位，这些统计数据越来越遭受严重的缺陷。因此，经济数据并不是国际事务中的中立仲裁者。相反，它受到四种偏见的困扰：专家注意力的偏倚意味着度量的对象（即要捕获的对象）取决于统计专家小组的关注。可计数性偏差使经济数据偏向于可计数的对象，而偏离了诸如无偿劳动和生产以及短暂的经济过程（如知识生产）。资本主义的偏见之所以出现，是因为经济统计自然而然地导致了全球经济中不平等的权力关系：他们误认为一个国家无力为其产品获取高价是因为生产力低下和缺乏附加值。最终，隐身-财富的偏见意味着，由于公司和个人在保密管辖区中隐藏了利润和财富，统计数据使我们对全球经济的扭曲形象自然化。本文告诫不要在国际事务中对统计数据使用批评不足。而且，它鼓励决策者“了解您的数据”，以免数字中的偏差产生歪斜的政策，