Michael Baxter

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Michael Arlen Baxter (born 18 May 1956, Ilford, Essex) is a British Government statistician.

Contents

[edit] Education

Michael Baxter was (like his brother, Laurence Baxter) educated at Ilford County High School and University College London; his father had also been to UCL.

[edit] Career

Michael Baxter has spent his entire career in the British Government Statistical Service. In that time, he has made contributions in several areas, including demography, seasonal adjustment and national accounts.

OPCS: His first job was at the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys. He produced the first-ever published official forecasts of the population changes of London boroughs.[1] His demographic analyses of the British censuses of 1971 and 1981 demonstrated that the undercount in both censuses was much higher than had previously been thought.[2]

Road accidents: At the Department of Transport, he worked on road accidents. His most notable work there was his report to Parliament on the effect of compulsory seat belt wearing on numbers of road accident casualties.[3]

Head of methodology: He was promoted to Head of methodology at the Central Statistical Office. His work on improving seasonal adjustment led to techniques that have been adopted internationally.[4][5]

He also devised the procedures used to reconcile the United Kingdom national accounts[6] and a procedure now used in many countries to interpolate from annual to monthly or quarterly data.[7]

Retail Prices Index: He worked on the Retail Prices Index, 1994-1998. In that time, he produced the standard reference on the RPI, the Technical Manual.[8] He headed the UK Government's research into claims that the Retail Price Index was biased.[9] This was reported in the national press.[10]

National accounts: He devised techniques to measure the output of several parts of national and local government[11], laying the foundations subsequently taken forward by Alwyn Pritchard. These techniques have been endorsed by the OECD[12] and are being used in several other countries.

Animal welfare: His only non-statistical job was as head of animal welfare at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food during the 2001 UK foot and mouth crisis.

Department for Transport: He then went back to Transport to work on neighbourhood statistics and measurement of accessibility of services.

Department of Health: He is now at the Department of Health, as head of pharmacy statistics.

[edit] Other activities

Michael Baxter was for several years a member of the national executive of the First Division Association. He has been National Secretary of B'nai B'rith Young Adults, secretary of the Redbridge Jewish Community Council and a member of the Council of the United Synagogue.

[edit] References

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ OPCS Monitor PP2 no. 3, Population Projections 1977-based (1979).
  2. ^ "Discussion on the meeting on ‘The 2001 census and beyond’", Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), Volume 167, Number 2, May 2004, pp. 229-248
  3. ^ Compulsory Seat Belt Wearing: Report by the Department of Transport; HMSO, 1985
  4. ^ Findley, D. F., Monsell, B. C., Bell, W. R., Otto, M. C. and Chen, B. (1988), New Capabilities and Methods of the X-12-ARIMA Seasonal Adjustment Program, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 16, pp127-177.
  5. ^ Dominique Ladiray and Benoît Quenneville, Seasonal Adjustment with the X-11 Method, Springer-Verlag, 2001; ISBN 0-387-95171-7.
  6. ^ "The production of Fully Reconciled UK National and Sector Accounts for 1988-91", Economic Trends no. 469, November 1992, pp80-98
    "Fully Reconciled UK National and Sector Accounts for 1989-92", Economic Trends no. 481, November 1993, pp90-106
  7. ^ http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Product.asp?vlnk=2184 Office for National Statistics site] Accessed 4 November 2006.
  8. ^ Office for National Statistics web site Accessed 4 Nov 2006.
  9. ^ "Implications of the US Boskin Report for the UK Retail Prices Index", Economic Trends no. 527, November 1997, pp56-62
    "Is the Retail Prices Index biased?", Office for National Statistics Business Monitor MM23: Retail Prices Index, December 1997, pp27-32
    "Three Year Research Programme on RPI Methodology", Office for National Statistics Business Monitor MM23: Retail Prices Index, January 1999, pp28-30; reprinted in Economic Trends no. 543, February 1999, pp25-29.
  10. ^ "Inflation is lower than figures show", The Observer (London); Jul 13, 1997; p.1
  11. ^ "Developments in the Measurement of General Government Output", Economic Trends no. 562, September 2000, pp31-33
  12. ^ OECD web site Accessed 4 Nov 2006.

[edit] External links

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