THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL ACCOUNTS IN ARGENTINA*

The history of national accounting in Argentina is presented in brief. The use of the production method as a basis for GDP estimates is explained and sources and methods of deriving the estimates for different sectors are commented on in some detail. Next the reliability of the estimates is examined for sectoral product, national income by factor shares and the components of final expenditure in terms of the comparison of two different estimates for the period 1950–1963. The degree of accuracy is judged to be generally sufficient, but the importance of economic censuses in the process of estimation is stressed. The importance of detailed studies on several different aspects of the economic structure (input-output, personal and family income by size and regional accounts) is also stressed as a basis for improving the reliability of estimates.     

SELECTED PROBLEMS OF WELFARE AND PRODUCTION IN THE NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

A number of rather traditional problems relating to the estimation of the national accounts have been raised in the recent literature. This paper examines five of these problems from the point of view of a government statistician working within certain time and resource constraints. Credibility, comprehensibility, theoretical validity, cost and analytical usefulness are the criteria which should aid in deciding how to treat such matters as the extension of the boundaries of economic production, proposed changes in the categorization of both final and intermediate expenses, the treatment of "total" welfare and estimation relating to the so-called underground economy.     

PROBLEMS OF DETERMINING AND MEASURING THE RELIABILITY OF NATIONAL ACCOUNTS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Most developing countries have compiled national accounts on a regular basis only for the last few years. It has not yet been possible for them to collect many of the statistics necessary to obtain good coverage of their economic activities by methods which would generally be accepted as reliable. Consequently the checks on reliability imposed by the framework of the national accounts are often absent, and the accounts prepared contain many estimates of doubtful quality. These doubts can usually only be removed as statistics collected by better methods become available. This is proving to be a slow process, partly because of the shortage of trained statistical staff and the competing demands of social and demographic statistics and partly because of the inherent difficulties in collecting good statistics from small businesses and traditional households. The need to define traditional households as producers as well as consumers leads to our demanding extra information from this difficult sector. In addition it is often difficult for the national accounts statistician, and even more so for the user, to find out in the time available exactly how some of the statistics with which he is presented were obtained. When this cannot be done it is impossible to assess their reliability. Thus assessing the overall reliability of national accounts in developing countries for even a limited range of uses is at present largely a matter of personal judgment. The information necessary to make more objective assessments rarely exists and hence the problems which developed countries face in using such information are not yet within the experience of most developing countries.     

REGIONAL ACCOUNTS IN ACTION: CONCERNING METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS FROM A BELGIAN PERSPECTIVE

In this paper we address the methodological problems encountered in the building of regional accounts. These problems are discussed by describing the methodological and conceptual options applied in an original and recent experience with regional accounts in Belgium. A comparison is offered with alternative choices concerning the regionalisation of main aggregates made in some other countries. The reasons for the urgency of an appropriate regional accounting framework (a regional equivalent of the universal SNA) are outlined in the conclusion.     

PROBLEMS OF DETERMINING AND MEASURING THE RELIABILITY OF THE NATIONAL ACCOUNTS: HUNGARY'S EXPERIENCES

Economic realities can be described in national accounting only by certain approximative means and presumptions; therefore they cannot be measured with absolute accuracy. However, because of their great importance these investigations must fulfil as far as possible the reliability required for the economic control and planning of the national economy, in accordance with predetermined concepts and methods. The reliability of national accounting is favourable in Hungary, as they are based mostly (92 percent) on the bookkeeping data of enterprises, cooperatives and institutions. The bookkeeping system is uniform in all economic organizations, in conformity with central regulations, and it takes into account the demand of computations for national accounting. Despite these favourable conditions lesser or greater contradictions can be found in the national accounts every year. The absolute measure of the differences is not significant; however, if compared to the annual increase it results in uncertainty of 15 percent. The uncertainty is reduced by the fact that the sign of differences is the same every year. The author classifies the causes of uncertainty in national accounts into four groups: 1. problems of the time shift of the connected economic processes and of their accounting; 2. effect of the enterprise interests; 3. inadequacy of methodological regulation; 4. inaccuracy of data surveys and processing. The study deals with the special factors of inaccuracy occurring in constant price accounting. Inaccuracy of the most important aggregates, for instance that of the volume index of the national income, comes to 0.5-0.7 percent which results, in the case of a yearly 5 percent “real” increase in the index, in reliability limits of 10 to 15 percent. In the concluding part of the study the author points out that in Hungary the unexplored contradictions are not shown as “statistical discrepancy” but they are included in the various aggregates on the basis of considerations discussed in the study.     

本地市场效应:理论和经验研究的新近进展

本地市场效应是指,在一个存在报酬递增和贸易成本的世界中,那些拥有相对较大国内市场需求的国家将成为净出口国。它源自新古典贸易理论解释复杂贸易实践的理论局限和新贸易理论经验证据匮乏的困境,在探寻两种理论范式相对解释力的过程中应运而生,并随着空间经济学的迅猛崛起而成为新经济地理范式(New Economic Geography Paradigm)的核心特征之一。本文在回顾本地市场效应的理论背景和基本理论模型的基础上,对其理论模型和经验证据的新近发展作了系统的梳理并进行了简要的评论。     

EXPERIENCE IN MEASUREMENT OF WELFARE COMPONENTS AND THEIR REGIONAL IMPLICATIONS

The paper relates the Swedish discussion and criticism of national accounting statistics, especially GNP, as a measure of welfare. It describes some results of recent Swedish attempts to find practicable measures of welfare components, i.e. the investigations of the Low Income Commission and of the Expert Group on Regional Development Research. In both cases the regional aspects of welfare are emphasized in the paper.
The results are presented as a sign of important needs for new methods and new systems of concepts in measuring welfare. The Expert Group has for instance in different ways tried to map and compare the "service structure" of separate parts of Sweden. The Low Income Commission has principally studied the position in Swedish society of low income recipients and has not been working particularly on the illumination of regional differences, but since different types of region are included as a background variable, the investigations also give certain measures of the regional aspects of welfare.
In the last part of the paper some of the risks that seem to be difficult to avoid in trying to use welfare measurements are pointed out.     

PERCEPTIONS, PROBLEMS AND METHODS OF PREPARING LABOUR FORCE ACCOUNTS IN INDIA

The paper concerns the links between labour force accounts and national accounts. It first discusses the variation in the perception of labour force among countries which results in much disparity in recorded participation rates. This obviously makes international comparison difficult. Since benchmark labour force information is often tied to population censuses which are infrequent and vary in concepts and approaches, even comparisons within a country over time are difficult. Finally a discussion of the use of labour force data to estimate the unrecorded economy is followed by suggestions on the direction for future work.     

近20年来中国区域经济发展差异的测定与评价

选取人均GDP、人均社会消费零售总额社会经济指标,通过计算其变异系数、加权变异系数、威廉森系数、最大与最小系数,对中国1978-2002年的经济发展不平衡性进行了动态时序分析,定量评价,了近20年来中国区域社会经济发展的差异程度;采用经济区位酶指标分析了中国经济发展空间格局的动态演化过程。结果表明,1990年以前中国经济区域差异程度在减小,1990年以后经济区域差异程度扩大,社会消费水平总体上呈扩大趋势。在空间格局上,经济发达区由过去的东北地区扩展到东部沿海地区,1970-1980年代区域差异表现为经济发达区、经济发展区、经济落后区之间的差异,而到1990年代主要表现为经济发达区和经济落后区之间的差异,两极化趋势明显,区域差异程度加大。     

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.     

SOCIAL ACCOUNTS AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME: THE MALAYSIAN ECONOMY IN 1970

Although the functional and institutional distributions of income are integrally connected to individual living standards and other development policy objectives, these dimensions are rarely given prominence or even accommodated within standard national accounting frameworks. This paper summarizes research on the estimation of a social accounting matrix (SAM) for Malaysia for 1970 in which the distribution of income between different factors and socio-economic groups is identified. It is the latest of a series of case studies involving some of the authors and is, perhaps, the most detailed of its kind. The study departs from the United Nations SNA guidelines at various points. The SNA basically proposes a commodity balance approach to national income accounting. In giving equal emphasis to income/outlay accounts as to the production accounts, the present study has brought together data from two major primary sources: a household expenditure survey and a production survey. Their combination poses several problems which are discussed in the paper. It leads to an integrated picture, in matrix form, of the interrelationships between income distribution and production structure in the Malaysian economy. Both the factor and household accounts in our SAM are disaggregated according to race and the geographic distinction between Peninsular and East Malaysia, with an urban/rural split within Peninsula Malaysia. The Peninsula labor force is further disaggregated by education level, while its households are then subdivided according to the employment status of main income earners. Arguments for and against these choices are presented. Some other aspects of the study can be noted. First, the distinction drawn between East and Peninsular Malaysia is desirable not only because of the inherent interest of the regions but also because of large differences in data availability and hence in estimation methods. Secondly, to complete our SAM it was necessary to estimate inter-household transfers, being the institutional analogue of inter-industry commodity flow. And finally an attempt has been made to impute the labor component of unincorporated business income. These, then, are the major problems which had to be overcome in our attempt to quantify the generation, distribution, and redistribution of income within Malaysia in a SAM framework.     

PRICES AND PRICE ANALYSIS IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

The paper discusses the role of prices in the framework of the new System of National Accounts (SNA) in terms of three major uses: (1) deflation, (2) price indicators, and (3) price analysis. Following a brief review of the price and quantity measures required by the new SNA with its emphasis on deflation of commodity flows and input-output accounts, in addition to the more conventional deflation of final demand categories, the paper discusses some of the conceptual, methodological and data problems involved in implementing the various uses of prices in the new SNA. Implementing the use of prices as deflators depends, in part, on the concept of output selected (national versus domestic; gross versus net), and which of six concepts of valuation, ranging from purchasers'value to true factor cost, is used. Some of the difficulties in deflating nonmarket flows (e.g., interplant transfers) and industry value added, based on the double deflation method, are discussed. In concept price deflators, which have shifting weights, cannot be used as price indicators, which should have fixed weights. In practice, this is often disregarded and the deflators are used as price indicators. The paper support the SNA recommendation for the development of price indexes with fixed weights to be used as price indicators, in addition to the implicit price deflators. Research in the United States indicates that differences in weights can result in different price measures for various subperiods, components of demand and sector output. Periodic revisions in weights to provide more current fixed weights for price and quantity indexes in each subperiod may minimize the problem but it introduces a new problem—lack of comparability with the constant price tables in the SNA which have fixed weights for the entire period. The new SNA provides a comprehensive and integrated framework for price analysis including the analysis of the structure of aggregate price changes, the industrial origin of final demand prices, and the impact of price change in one sector of the economy on the rest of the economy. Some major gaps which need to be overcome in order to implement the use of the new SNA for price analysis include the development of industry capital stock estimates, separate estimates of proprietors’income, reconciliation of value added and distribution share estimates, and the development of a wide variety of information to supplement the conventional input-output tables in the SNA. Implementing the various objectives of price measures within the framework of the accounts will require a number of improvements in existing price measures and expanding the scope of coverage. “List” prices should be superseded by “transactions” prices and better techniques and data need to be developed to provide for quality adjustment of prices. Coverage will need to be expanded to include services, freight rates, trade margins, government expenditures, and also fill in gaps for many manufactured products. Finally, where possible, use of unit values as price indexes or deflators, e.g., imports and exports, should be replaced by direct price measures.     

ON THE TREATMENT OF TAXES AND GOVERNMENT IN THE NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

Framed in the context of the ongoing revision of the 1993 System of National Accounts (SNA), this note proposes a new presentation of the National Accounts. While it does not require new information, nor difficult calculations, it is suggested to be conceptually clearer and practically simpler. The changes concern the treatment of taxes and government in the national accounts which imply that: (i) GDP, measured at basic price, is now exactly the sum of all value added, which is split in the compensation of employees and an enlarged operating surplus; (ii) the two functions of government are clearly distinguished in a modified sequence of accounts, that is, as producing non-market services up to the allocation of primary income account, and then as redistributing the national income; and (iii) with a conventional allocation of government services and GDP broken down between market GDP and non-market GDP, households remain the only final consumer and the so called question of consumption subsidies is resolved.     

THE TREATMENT OF PENSIONS AND INSURANCE IN NATIONAL ACCOUNTS*

In the course of the nearly two decades since the revised SNA was developed, the role of pensions and insurance in the developed western economies has been significantly altered. The United Nations System of National Accounts (SNA) is not fully consistent in its treatment of pension and insurance transactions. This paper examines whether, in view of the changed institutional context, a modification of the SNA treatment of this complex of flows would be desirable. It investigates the impact on household income and saving of adopting a somewhat more consistent transactor/transaction approach for all pension and insurance transactions. Four main topics are covered: (1) social security, (2) private pensions, (3) life insurance, and (4) casualty insurance. Each is considered in terms of the treatment of contributions, the treatment of benefits, and the handling of reserves and the income generated by them. The same sorts of problem arise in all four cases.     

THE TREATMENT OF INTEREST AND FINANCIAL INTERMEDIARIES IN THE NATIONAL ACCOUNTS OF AUSTRALIA

This paper is divided into two main sections. The first part summarises briefly the main points which have arisen in the lengthy debate over the treatment of banking intermediaries in the national accounts. The discussion emphasises the method adopted in the early Australian accounts when banks were treated in the same way as the general government. It is argued that this method is simpler and provides a more realistic account of the functions of banks than the current SNA proposal.
The second part of the paper examines the functions of banks in Australia. It uses data of interest and administration cost for separate banking institutions to examine the incidence of bank costs. It is concluded that the costs do not fall on borrowers or lenders but are a charge in providing a communal service in the establishment and maintenance of the financial system.     

THE ROLE OF MICRODATA IN THE NATIONAL ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL ACCOUNTS*

Microdata sets—samples of data relating to individual reporting units—can provide a valuable extension of the national economic accounts as they presently exist, making it possible to meet many of the criticisms being leveled at the accounts over their failure to include much nontransactions information that is essential to the evaluation of economic and social performance. To serve this purpose, however, the microdata sets must be integrated with the aggregate accounts, and with one another. A microdata sets relating to any given sector should add up (with appropriate weighting) to the economic constructs for that sector in the national accounts, and the microdata set for one sector should be articulated as appropriate with those of other sectors. This paper discusses techniques for constructing such microdata sets, including necessary adjustments of the macro accounts, techniques of alignment of microdata with the macro accounts and the creation and development of synthetic microdata sets. Synthetic matching and other techniques of merging data sets are discussed. The paper concludes with a consideration of the methodological implication of the integration of microdata and national accounts.