Economic research services

Tender description

A new Centre of Excellence is being sought for the analysis of emerging and future issues in measuring the modern economy. ONS's objective is the establishment of an Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) that will offer the capacity for fundamental methodological and conceptual work to address the challenges of measuring the economy in the modern world. These include, for example, measuring new forms of economic activity in a globalised world, meeting the needs for local, city and regional statistics, understanding the evolution of productivity and the productivity puzzle. In addition: — ESCoE will form a platform for constructive discussion and dialogue around official statistics, to feed into the development and improvement of ONS economic statistics and data processing methodologies; — Provide a venue for training a new generation of academics whose research focus is economic statistics. Remit of the ESCoE: Whilst the ESCoE will be an independent research centre, it will be given a remit shaped by ONS's priorities for the development of economic statistics. ONS will update the remit annually in the light of changing needs and circumstances, though recognising that much of the work ESCoE undertakes will be medium term in nature. The ESCoE will regularly provide working papers, datasets and methodologies to ONS to enable discussion and development of economic statistics. The ESCoE will play a key role in enabling ONS to influence the International agenda, and will organise at least 1 International Conference a year to share best practice and horizon-scan for up-coming issues in economic statistics.