Statistical Terms Glossary

Imports of goods and services (merchandise trade) are goods which add to the stock of material resources of a country by entering its economic territory.

Also called: "import dependency indicator" and "import penetration indicator", it measures the extent of domestic demand fulfilled by imports.

A body of water confined by a dam, dike, floodgate or other barrier.

An account or fund maintained for payments made in cash, commonly used as a petty cash fund. A fixed maximum sum is kept in the fund and, as the fund is depleted, this sum is periodically brought up to the maximum.

Clarification of the meaning of improper political activity is a subject of ongoing relevance with respect to OECD anti-corruption instruments. At a minimum, political involvement is deemed improper in a foreign country if it is illegal in a company’s home or host country. For instance, under the legal systems of some countries, an advantage promised or given to any person, in anticipation of his or her becoming a foreign public official, is illegal; under the legal systems of many countries it is considered technically distinct from the offence of bribery.

Includes the use of: piped water into dwelling, plot or yard; public tap or standpipe; borehole or tube well; protected dug well; protected spring; rainwater collection and bottled water (if a secondary available source is also improved).

Is defined as one that hygienically separates human excreta from human contact.

An improvised housing unit is an independent, makeshift shelter or structure, built of waste materials and without a predetermined plan for the purpose of habitation by one household, which is being used as living quarters at the time of the census.

Is a procedure for entering a value for a specific data item where the response is missing or unusable.

Is a component of the total variance of the survey estimate introduced by the imputation procedure.

Imputed abatement costs correspond to expenditures related with the measures which would be necessary to reduce the direct pressures on natural assets (for example from air emissions or waste disposal). Ideally, imputed abatement costs should always be calculated as the sum of direct and indirect cost effects of additional prevention measures.

Some transactions which it is desirable to include in the accounts do not take place in money terms and so cannot be measured directly; in such cases a conventional value is imputed to the corresponding expenditure (the conventions used vary from case to case and are described in the SNA as necessary).

The use of parities for one or several basic headings as estimates of the parities for other basic headings where similar items are purchased, e.g., parities for books purchased by educational institutions imputed from book purchases by consumers.

The price assigned to an item for which the price is missing in a particular period. The term ‘‘imputed price’’ may also refer to the price assigned to an item that is not sold on the market, such as a good or service produced for own consumption, including housing services produced by owner occupiers, or one received as payment in kind or as a free transfer from a government or non-profit institution.

Dwellings owned by the households that live in them. The dwellings are fixed assets that their owners use to produce housing services for their own consumption, these services being usually included within the scope of the CPI. The rents may be imputed by the rents payable on the market for equivalent accommodation or by user costs.

Social contributions are imputed when employers provide social benefits themselves directly to their employees, former employees or dependants out of their own resources without involving an insurance enterprise or autonomous pension fund, and without creating a special fund or segregated reserve for the purpose; the imputed contributions are equal in value to the amount of social contributions that would be needed to secure the de facto entitlements to the social benefits they accumulate.

Financing from own resources rather than borrowings.

A call option that has a strike price less than the price of the underlying asset or a put option that has a strike price more than the price of the underlying asset. Option dans le course is the term used in the MATIF.

See Deferred member

All persons who are not classified as employed or unemployed are defined as inactive.

The inactivity rate is the proportion of the population that is not in the labour force.

Not good enough or too low in quality ways to access to buildings, transportation and information.

Is defined as “a situation where persons in employment wanted or sought to work less hours than they did during the reference period, either in the same job or in another job, accepting a corresponding reduction of income”.