Read on Twitter
Some scholarship about political process behind building statistics, economic and otherwise, that I have found useful. (Responding to @DanMertens query. Couldn't react with more than one tweet; hence this [lengthy] thread.) Sorry to everyone I missed, and feel free to add... 
Here are a number of edited volumes about that discuss policymaking around statistics more generally, starting with Metrics, edited by Vincanne Adams https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/78/MetricsWhat-Counts-in-Global-Health
William Alonso and Paul Starrâs The Politics of Numbers⊠https://www.russellsage.org/publications/politics-numbers
Sally Engle Merryâs The Seductions of Quantification. Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Trafficking https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo23044232.html
Peter Andreas and Kelly Greenhillâs Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts⊠https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801476181/sex-drugs-and-body-counts/#bookTabs=1
On the statistics-development link, good examples include âThe Rise of Measurement-Driven Governance: the Case of International Developmentâ by @JacquelineMBest https://brill.com/view/journals/gg/23/2/article-p163_3.xml
Also AndrĂ© Broome, Alexandra Homolar and @Mattkranke âBad science: International organizations and the indirect power of global benchmarkingâ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1354066117719320
As well as Daniel Speich-ChassĂ©, for example Travelling with the GDP through Early Develoment Economicsâ History. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/22501/
Michael Wardâs memoir of sorts Quantifying the World: UN Ideas and Statistics, https://books.google.de/books/about/Quantifying_the_World.html?id=-DpB0TnhMCUC&redir_esc=y
Boris Samuelâs âEconomic calculations, instability and (in)formalisation of the state in Mauritania, 2003â2011â https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02255189.2014.877878
And âThe national accounting paradox: how statistical norms corrode international economic dataâ by @lukaslinsi and myself about dynamics in international statistical standard setting https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1354066120936339
An exciting and enlightening strand of work, often overlooked in (I)PE, concerns the politics of racial classification, for example @debthompsonphd in The Schematic State. Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census https://www.cambridge.org/de/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/schematic-state-race-transnationalism-and-politics-census?format=PB
And National Colors. Racial Classification and the State in Latin America, by Mara Loveman https://global.oup.com/academic/product/national-colors-9780199337354?cc=de&lang=en&
As well as a fascinating inside perspective in Alice Robbinâs âClassifying racial and ethnic group data in the United States: the politics of negotiation and accommodationâ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1352023700001313
In a more ethnographic vein, there is the landmark Sorting Things Out. Classification and its Consequences by Bowker and Leigh Star https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sorting-things-out
A specific strand investigates politics behind statisticsâ gender skew in favor of male labor, starting with Marilyn Waringâs Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth https://www.marilynwaring.com/publications/counting-for-nothing.asp
As well as âRecasting the Global Political Economy: Counting Womenâs Unpaid Workâ by Hoskyns and Rai https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13563460701485268
And @daniel_derock with âHidden in Plain Sightâ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563467.2019.1680964
On finance, governance and statistics, next to the work of @jacob_assa mentioned already (also his book), there is for example âMaking finance productiveâ by @bceagle71: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03085147.2011.529337
And âSeeing like the Fedâ by Fligstein, Brundage and Schultz: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0003122417728240
Specifically in the EU context, check out for example Deborah Mabbett and Waltraud Schelkleâs chapter âSearching under the lamp-post: the evolution of fiscal surveillanceâ https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198755739.001.0001/acprof-9780198755739-chapter-6
Also âThe performativity of potential output: pro-cyclicality and path dependency in coordinating European fiscal policiesâ by @heimbergecon and Jakob Kapeller https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09692290.2017.1363797
Enlightening monographs, from different angles, include Mirrors of the Economy by @yoshikoherrera https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801478420/mirrors-of-the-economy/#bookTabs=1
Also @MJerven in Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do about It. https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801478604/poor-numbers/#bookTabs=1
In a more historical but still instructive bent about the political dynamics behind standard setting, check out for example Statistics and the German State, 1900-1945. The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge by @adam_tooze https://adamtooze.com/statistics-and-the-german-state/
As well as The hegemony of growth: the OECD and the making of the economic growth paradigm by @MGSchmelzer https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-hegemony-of-growth/A80C4DF19D804C723D55A5EFE7A447FD
And of course The Power of a Single Number by Philipp Lepenies http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-power-of-a-single-number/9780231175104
A very meticulous and detailed take on the politics of inflation measurement in the USA is in Thomas Staplefordâs The Cost of Living in America: A Political History of Economic Statistics, 1880-2000, http://www.tomstapleford.com/books/cost-of-living-in-america/
On the politics of on building unemployment statistics, finally, there is Constructing Unemployment: The Politics of Joblessness in East and West by @PBaxandall https://www.routledge.com/Constructing-Unemployment-The-Politics-of-Joblessness-in-East-and-West/Baxandall/p/book/9780815388159
There are more literature references, should they be useful, in my recent âEconomic statistics as political artefactsâ, also about the consequences of statistical choices, in addition to those about their origins, mentioned above https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09692290.2020.1828141?src=recsys
