NATIONAL ACCOUNTING AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION

Conventional national accounts are often seen as concentrating on the production process, on how goods and services are produced, rather than on consumption, or who the products serve. Production finances consumption via income generation, distribution and re-distribution. This paper demonstrates this inter-action by elaborating a full economic accounting matrix, and takes both theoretical and practical considerations into account. The aim is to explore how far the revised SNA can and should give emphasis to issues of income distribution and consumption.     

CHINA'S NATIONAL INCOME: A SURVEY OF ESTIMATES

A number of official and Western estimates of China's national income for the period since 1949 are at present available. The official estimates are based on the Marxian production concept while the Western estimates are, in the main, based on the comprehensive production concept. The periods covered by the estimates vary; and even in cases where the periods covered are the same, the estimates vary in magnitude and, in most cases, in the implied rate of economic growth. Apart from differences arising from the different national income concepts and definitions employed in individual estimates, sources of discrepancies between series of estimates can be traced to the particular sets of primary data employed and also to the particular procedures followed in estimating the national income components. The present paper brings together the various estimates available to date and indicates for each, as far as possible, the basic production concept adopted, the particular national income aggregates estimated, the basic estimation approach employed, and the special procedures used for estimating some of the components of national income. Comparisons of the major series of estimates for the period 1952–1959 are made and the sources of discrepancies between the series are discussed. Finally, some problems are described which a researcher in the West has to contend with in working on China's national income accounting.     

NATIONAL INCOME, WELFARE, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

This article explores the assumptions underlying present definitions of national income in its principal uses, and considers the alterations that would be needed to allow for the inclusion of environmental quality. A numerical example illustrates the impact of alternative measures. The discussion concludes that if we want national income to conform more closely to theoretical concepts of welfare indices, then we need to include a proxy for those environmental services that would not be completely free goods if it were possible to overcome their inherent non-marketability. The least unsatisfactory proxy would be the spending on environmental protection.     

NOTES AND MEMORANDA INCOME, CONSUMPTION AND SAVING IN URBAN AND RURAL INDIA: A NOTE

In a recent issue of the Review of Income and Wealth [1], Uma Datta Roy Choudhury presented some results on consumption and saving functions in India. While the study is interesting, some of the results are quite peculiar. Thus she reports a marginal propensity to save of 0.88 for the urban sector, an abnormally high figure. Other available evidence points to a much lower figure. Again she reports a negative marginal propensity to consume out of permanent income for urban households. This makes no economic sense. Furthermore her attempts at explaining urban consumption behaviour are not very successful. In this paper, we shall show that these suspicious results are the consequences of the measurement and definitions of the variables, and the specification of the functions. Once these shortcomings are removed, we obtain more satisfactory and more plausible results.
In the first section we present a critique of Mrs. Roy Choudhury's article. In the second section we present our results. The last section summarizes the conclusions.     

凯恩斯与马克思国民收入理论的比较研究

凯恩斯的国民收入基本公式以及实现宏观经济平衡的基本条件(I=S)与马克思资本主义两大部类再生产基本公式和平衡条件具有内在的相似性和逻辑关系。作为对宏观经济整体运行状态的研究,凯恩斯的国民收入公式和I=S在马克思两大部类再生产基本公式和平衡条件简单变形的基础上就可以得出。可以说,凯恩斯开创的宏观经济学是对马克思社会再生产理论模型的基本公式及相关经济思想的直接吸收和客观发展。     

CONCEPT AND DEFINITION OF INCOME IN THE NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

It is a truism that the national accounts have engendered their own concept of income which is different from other contexts such as business accounting, taxation or welfare analysis. Less known are the principles on which this income concept is based. This article is an attempt to specify such principles, investigating in particular the role of the transaction principle, and to derive an income concept therefrom. The crucial point of the argument is whether or not it is appropriate within the system of the national accounts to assign an income to sectors other than the households. The theory is applied to some practical questions which have been discussed in the process of the revision of the SNA.     

EXPANDING IMPUTED VALUES IN THE NATIONAL INCOME AND PRODUCT ACCOUNTS*

After defining economic activity the author lists the chief types of non–market economic activities for which he has prepared estimates for the United States 1929–1973, and briefly describes his methodology and data sources. Some major findings are: (1) As of 1973 GNP adjusted to include the additional imputations was 63.5 percent larger than the official estimate. (2) At least since 1929 imputed values have grown faster than official GNP, especially when both are measured in terms of real factor costs. (3) The personal sector comprises a far larger portion of the national economy-almost one-third—when account is taken of imputed labor and property compensation, and its relative importance has grown. (4) Gross government product is more than 60 percent higher when the imputed rental value of public property is added to the compensation of general government employees. (5) Reflecting the relative growth of non-business wealth, imputed property income has risen much faster than monetized property income. This has mitigated the decline in the property share of expanded gross national income compared with its share in the official estimates.     

BULGARIA'S NATIONAL INCOME AND ECONOMIC GROWTH, 1913–45

The article concerns Bulgarian statisticians' work on accounting of national income within the first half of the 20th century. Basic concepts of these authors are described, and aggregate data sets derived by them presented. The trend of economic growth in Bulgaria is analyzed, mainly from 1924 to 1945. The statistics of industrial and agricultural change, as well as the foreign trade activity are considered. An historical interpretation of that change is given.     

AGGREGATE HEALTH EXPENDITURES, NATIONAL INCOME, AND INSTITUTIONS FOR PRIVATE PROPERTY

Being careful about the potential for endogeneity bias, I find robust evidence that "institutions for private property" share a more fundamental relationship with health expenditures than does national income. This research should interest a wide audience. First, health scholars may be interested in its relatively careful estimate of income's relationship to health spending. Second, institutions and commitment scholars should be interested in its evidence of institutions' primacy in a heretofore overlooked, but theoretically and substantively attractive, application. Finally, policy entrepreneurs may find important the implication that reforming governance structures can be more productive than is directly funding health services.

A useful model of the macroaspect or even microaspects of an economy must build the institutional constraints into the model.

(North, 1990, p. 112)     

INTERTEMPORAL COMPARABILITY OF NATIONAL INCOME IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA

The national income and product account (United Nations concept) in current prices itemized by distributive shares and by type of expenditure is given for the period 1929–1937. The national income by industrial origin and the reproducible national wealth are computed for the year 1930. Differences between the U.N. and the material concept are explained by means of the 1939 data.
The national product series in real terms are computed (a) by means of the price deflation of the types of expenditure, and (b) as the physical output of goods and services by industrial origin (since 1926). Major changes In distributive shares are explained with the help of Price-cost analysis.
The national product in real terms attains the lowest point in 1935 and not in 1933, as the industrial production and foreign trade series indicate. The structure of gross national expenditure reveals the same pattern of shifts, as is well known from other industrially developed countries during the business cycle.
The development of national product by industrial origin, however, reveals some conspicuous singularities. Especially the uninterrupted increase in trade services (in terms of both persons engaged and turnover in constant prices) is an anomaly in the period of 1929–1937.
Further, the Increase of rent (due to the gradual abolition of rent control), contrasting with the general fall of prices, led to a major shift in the distribution of national income during the early thirties. The other remarkable change resulting mainly from the changing price structure was the decrease of the farmers' share in national income.
The production, transportation and distribution series in real terms reveal some time-lags. These result partly from the shift from the foreign to the home market, partly from the compensatory effects of stock movements, and partly from the delayed adjustment of consumers to declining income.     

TAXES AND INCOME: A MICROUNIT ANALYSIS

The paper details the methodology used and the results obtained in a recently completed study of the total U.S. tax burden based on microdata survey files. The method of constructing the data base—the 1966 MERGE file—is discussed, and the needed imputations and adjustments to income and taxes to bring the file totals up to national income aggregates are described. An explanation is included of adjusted family income, a unique income concept used in the study to measure and compare tax burdens.
The study involved the evaluation of errective tax burdens under eight different assumptions regarding the incidence of the various major taxes. Those assumptions are detailed and the results of the study are presented. The essential conclusion of the study is that the overall impact of the tax system is virtually proportional for 90 percent of the families in the United States regardless of the incidence assumptions used. However, substantial differences in tax burdens were found among various subgroups of the population.