Daniel DeRock is a PhD candidate in International Political Economy at the University of Amsterdam. His research project is funded by the European Research Council. He is a member of Fickle Formulas, a team of eight people investigating the political economy of economic statistics. Daniel’s research focuses on relations between international organizations and low-income member states with regard to the implementation of standards and statistical capacity building. Organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF have actively promoted the spread of official statistics and indicators to developing countries. Considering the controversies this has sometimes generated, this project asks: how have they done that, and why so?