Revision der IAB-Arbeitszeitrechnung 2014

Abstract

"This report documents reasons, methods and results of the general revision 2014 of the IAB working-time measurement concept (AZR) for the period from 1991 to 2013. The AZR which is part of the German system of national accounts (VGR) provides long comparable time series for industry-specific hours worked and the volume of work for Germany. Since the concepts and definitions of the VGR are also binding for the AZR, the 2014 general revision of the VGR leads to changes regarding the concepts, methods and resulting time series. In this context, we also take this as an occasion to revise and update statistical methods and data sources of the AZR in its whole.<br> A key part of the methodological changes is due to the introduction of modern techniques of time series analysis. By multivariate structural time series models embedded in a state space framework, all available information can be exploited timely and efficiently for estimating the different components of hours worked. In this context a new approach is proposed which makes the use of a multiplicity of relevant time series for structural time series models feasible by principal components methods. This would otherwise be possible with a high computational cost only.<br> In the following, we present the base concept of the AZR, and outly the changes of the revision of the VGR as well as its impact on the AZR. We describe the foundation of the estimation methods and discuss methodological developments as well as estimates for the respective components of hours worked. A subsequent section depicts the most relevant results of the revision for the period from 1991 to 2013 and compares results before and after the revision." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Wanger, S., Weigand, R. & Zapf, I. (2014): Revision der IAB-Arbeitszeitrechnung 2014. Grundlagen, methodische Weiterentwicklungen sowie ausgewählte Ergebnisse im Rahmen der Revision der Volkswirtschaftlichen Gesamtrechnungen. (IAB-Forschungsbericht 09/2014), Nürnberg, 51 p.