Statistical Terms Glossary

The weight of cargo in (ton) exported through ports.

The quantity of a particular commodity in one country as a proportion of the quantity of the same commodity in another country.

A test that may be used under the axiomatic approach which requires that the price index remains unchanged after the quantity vectors for the two periods being compared are interchanged.

The similarity of the structure of quantities between any pair of countries is measured by the correlation coefficient that is obtained by regressing the internal quantity structure of one country against the corresponding internal quantity structure of the other country.

Weights defined in terms of physical quantities such as the number or total weight of goods or the number of services. Quantity weights are only feasible at the detailed product level because meaningful aggregation of product weights requires of them to be commensurate.

The inter-country validation procedure used by Eurostat and the OECD to edit the average survey prices reported by participating countries for a basic heading. For each basic heading covered by a price survey, the procedure screens the average survey prices for possible errors and evaluates the reliability of the price ratios they provide.

Some unincorporated enterprises may behave in much the same way as corporations. In the SNA such enterprises should be treated as quasi-corporations if they have a complete set of accounts, and included with corporations in the non-financial and financial corporations sectors.SNA recognises three main kinds of quasi-corporations: a) Unincorporated enterprises owned by government units engaged in market production and operated in a similar way to publicly owned corporations; b) Unincorporated enterprises, including unincorporated partnerships or trusts, owned by households that are operated as if they were privately owned corporations; c) Unincorporated enterprises that belong to institutional units resident abroad, referred to as “branches”. The SBR should cover quasi-corporations.

Some unincorporated enterprises may behave in much the same way as corporations. In the SNA such enterprises should be treated as quasi-corporations if they have a complete set of accounts, and included with corporations in the non-financial and financial corporations sectors.SNA recognises three main kinds of quasi-corporations: a)
Unincorporated enterprises owned by government units engaged in market production and operated in a similar way to
publicly owned corporations; b) Unincorporated enterprises, including unincorporated partnerships or trusts, owned by
households that are operated as if they were privately owned corporations; c) Unincorporated enterprises that belong
to institutional units resident abroad, referred to as “branches”. The SBR should cover quasi-corporations.

Includes equity-like Instruments and other forms of loans that have the form of equity or equity that has the form of loans. An example is equity with a put agreement, i.e., unlike normal equity, the investor requires return of the equity, for example, in five years at ten per cent interest.

See near-money.

See: rent

All individuals who fall outside of the gender and sexuality ‘norms’.

Theoretical reflection, developed in the humanities in the mid 1980s against a backdrop of growing theoretical interest in sexualities, which was coterminous with the civil movement’s adoption of the word ‘queer’, which previously had a pejorative meaning.

The waiting list for the issue of securities (Switzerland, Federal Republic of Germany).

See acid-test ratio.

In the context of employment, quota or reservation is an obligation to employ a fixed number or fixed proportion of people from a particular group.

A share of the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) allocated to an operating unit such as a country, a community, a vessel, a company or an individual fisherman (individual quota) depending on the system of allocation. Quotas may or may not be transferable, inheritable, and tradable. While generally used to allocate total allowable catch, quotas could be used also to allocate fishing effort or biomass.

A sample, usually of human beings, in which each investigator is instructed to collect information from an assigned number of individuals (the quota) but the individuals are left to his personal choice. In practice this choice is severely limited by “controls”, e.g. he is instructed to secure certain numbers in assigned age groups, equal numbers of the two sexes, certain numbers in particular social classes and so forth.

Quota systems have been viewed as one of the most effective special measures or affirmative actions for increasing women’s political participation. There are now 77 countries with constitutional, electoral or political party quotas for women. In countries where women’s issues had always been relegated to the lowest priority, increases in the number of women in decision-making positions help move women’s agendas up to a higher priority level.

In this method used for the compilation of construction price indices the problem of comparability of components between construction projects is overcome by having respondents quote prices for a standard construction output product (house, apartment, bridge, school, etc.) whose specifications are kept constant from one period to the next.