Empty sources of growth accounting,and empirical replacements à la Kaldor and Goodwin with some beef

Standard sources of growth accounts are empty of content because they rely on neoclassical production theory. Rather, analysis can be based on productivity growth equations derived from national income and product accounts (NIPA) accounting conventions and a helpful algebraic identity. These schemes impose valid restrictions on growth rates of the wage rate, profit rate, capital, labor, and their respective average productivities. One states that the output growth rate equals employment growth plus productivity growth. The standard “convergence” model basically adds accumulation dynamics to this identity. Replacing the aggregate production function with proper accounting restrictions gives a growth model with detailed results that differ markedly from those of the standard model. Alternative, essentially Kaldorian supply- and demand-based alternatives to sources of growth based on a familiar output growth versus productivity growth diagram with constant employment growth contours added in look like a useful alternative to the mainstream models. With distributive dynamics added in, the model would also generate Goodwin-style cycles.     

巴黎发展绿色交通及其对北京的启示

巴黎市拥有与北京市相近的地域面积、人口数量以及机动车保有量，近30年来一直奉行可持续发展交通的城市规划理念，并取得了良好成绩。从法国交通发展国家政策以及巴黎市交通发展规划入手，通过梳理巴黎多年来发展绿色交通的政策措施及其成效，并与北京市交通的现状和问题进行了对比，以期为北京发展绿色交通提出对策建议。     

The cyclical behavior of the Italian business survey data

This article investigates the cyclical behavior of the degree of plant utilization, inventories, order book level, and confidence climate index data (taken from Italian Business tendency surveys). It first analyzes the co-movements between the survey indicators and the Italian business cycle by performing a sensitivity analysis with respect to the reference business cycle and to the filtering technique, using time and frequency domain methods. It then discusses the ability of such indicators to predict business cycles and their importance with respect to other standard national accounts data. The results of bivariate analysis show that, whereas the degrees of plant utilization, confidence climate and order book level are procyclical, inventories appear to be countercyclical with respect to both the industrial sector and the whole-economy business cycle. Spectral analysis suggests that the high-frequency elements of the survey data tend to lead those of the business-cycle estimates obtained from the national income accounts. The choice of filtering technique affects the results, especially in the magnitude of co-movements. The forecasting exercise reveals the usefulness of such data in forecasting the real economy in the short run.     

COMMODITY BALANCES AND NATIONAL ACCOUNTS: A SAM PERSPECTIVE

This paper is concerned with the treatment of commodity and activity balances in a national accounts context. It makes use of a general method for reducing the size of a social accounting matrix (SAM) by apportioning the elements of one or more accounts to the rest. The national accounts are looked at in terms of their usefulness for policy analysis, not least analysis of the impact of price changes. The SNA convention of separately distinguishing activities and commodities is endorsed. However, in contrast to the SNA, it is argued that for analytic purposes commodity transactions should be recorded at market prices, with a separate account for each of the markets for a given commodity in which a distinct price prevails. The SNA SAM is shown to be a reduced form of the SAM resulting from this recommended treatment of commodity transactions, while a further round of reductions (apportionments) yields SAMs which are familiar from input-output analysis, in which activities and commodities are not separately distinguished. It is argued that no special effort would be required to produce SAMs in which commodity balances are recorded at market prices as recommended here (the necessary data are also required to produce the conventional SNA tableaux), and that all reduced form versions of such SAMs, including the SNA, are inferior as a basis for the analysis of price effects on the structure of production.     

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.     

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.     

INTERACTION BETWEEN NATIONAL ACCOUNTS AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC POLICY

An important application of national accounts is in the formulation of socio-economic policy. This paper starts out with a discussion of the current situation in the Netherlands. Subsequently, it identifies several universal trends (more micro-oriented policy formulation, globalization, the rise of the flexible service economy and the increasing intertwinement of economic, social and environmental policies) and outlines how the national accounts might be adapted and extended so as to enhance its role as the core information system for policy formulation at the macro-and meso-level.     

National Income Accounting and Public Policy

Modern national income accounting was designed in the early 20th century for the purpose of providing improved indicators about the performance of the economy so that government policy makers could better control the economy. The way that performance is measured affects the types of policies used to try to accomplish policy goals. Two attributes of national income accounting are analyzed for their effects on economic policy. First, government production is included in the national income accounts at cost, rather than at market value as private sector output is measured. This biases policy toward a larger public sector. Second, output is measured as a homogeneous dollar amount. This biases policy toward focusing on increasing quantities of inputs and outputs in the production process, rather than on innovation and entrepreneurship, which are the true engines of economic progress. Economic policy could be improved by focusing less on national income as an indicator of policy, and more on the underlying processes that foster economic progress.     

REGIONAL ECONOMIC ACCOUNTING IN THE U.S. OFFICE OF BUSINESS ECONOMICS–AN APPRAISAL*

This paper discusses the conceptual framework in which regional economic accounts in the United States are viewed and the functions which those accounts serve. It points out that the major differences between regional and national accounts relate to factor returns to capital. First, returns to capital are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to measure meaningfully on a geographic basis. Secondly, because the capital market in the United States is a reasonably perfect one geographically, the return to capital that originates in a given region has little significance as either a stimulant or a constraint to production in that region. In terms of the functions of regional accounts, the point is made that whereas national economic accounts can aid economic decision-making in three general areas of policyallocation, distribution and stabilization—with perhaps greatest emphasis now placed on the last of these, regional accounts are most useful in matters relating to allocation and distribution. Information needed for the use of regional accounts in decision-making with regard to allocation and distribution problems is examined. Against these needs are placed an inventory of regional accounts which are available in the Regional Economics Division, Office of Business Economics. The available accounts are found to fall considerably short of those needed for allocation decisions. In contrast, regional accounts as presently constituted have much to offer as tools for analyzing the problems of regional economic distribution, although here too, much additional information is needed.     

FINANCIAL OPERATIONS AND MONETARY STATISTICS: IMPROVED CONCORDANCE IN THE FRENCH NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

National accounts are a powerful means of coordinating different statistical systems. The better their classifications are adapted to the basic statistics or the information blocks one wishes to use, the better the national accounts play their part. This statement explains why, taking the opportunity of revising the whole system, French national accountants tried to improve the concordance between financial operation tables and monetary statistics. Other reasons leading to this attempt can be found in the dissatisfaction of users having to face different and inconsistent financial information such as the monetary statistics on one hand and the financial aggregates of the national accounts on the other; and even more reasons appear in the organizational field since those two statistical systems are issued by two neighbour services of the Banque de France, often depending on the same sources. Further, many propitious factors are converging at the same time: the French financial system is undergoing profound transformations originating as much in the behaviour of economic agents as in the law, and the statistical operations have to adapt to these changes. The national accounts will in the near future include balance sheets in which financial asset holdings are directly comparable to the money supply aggregates. In its first part our paper sets forth the detailed reasons for our attempts, the conditions in which it took place and the present results. We have reached a much better degree of consistency between the two systems, even if the final scheme has not yet been adopted in either the monetary field or in the field of national accounts. But an important question remains open about the durability of the harmonization: we think that it could be relatively uncertain because of the differences in the goals pursued by the two systems and the constraints which they face. That is why in the second part of the paper we tried to review the way such a pragmatic undertaking as ours could call into question the way in which financial operations are described in the system of national accounts. If one agrees with the present boundary between the real and the financial sphere, the articulation must remain somewhat elementary. But if one wants to revise the usual so-called dichotomy between financial and non financial phenomena, we think that a complete rebuilding of the conceptual framework of the accounts has to be done; this would necessitate a considerable amount of theoretical and practical work.     

U.S. INCOME, SAVING, AND WEALTH, 1929—1969

The objective of this paper is to present income and expenditure accounts, accumulation accounts, and the asset side of the wealth accounts for the U.S. private national economy in current and constant prices. These accounts are integrated with the production and factor outlay accounts for the U.S. private domestic economy in current and constant prices given in our earlier papers. Taken together, these accounts constitute a complete accounting system in current and constant prices for the private sector of the U.S. economy.
Our complete accounting system incorporates a new concept of the standard of living, defined as the ratio of the quantity index of gross private national expenditures to the quantity index of gross private national consumer receipts. Our concept of the standard of living is similar but not identical to our concept of total factor productivity. Changes in the private standard of living reflect both changes in total factor productivity and changes in the proportion of the total product consumed in the public sector.     

CONSTANT WEALTH NATIONAL INCOME: ACCOUNTING FOR WAR DAMAGE WITH AN APPLICATION TO THE NETHERLANDS, 1940–45

The issue of the proper way to address and document crisis and disaster in the national accounts is brought into focus by analyzing a practical case: the damage caused by the Second World War as discussed at a 1945 Paris reparations conference. It is concluded that "what if" damage e.g. output not produced due to the war should not be included in the national accounts, but factual damage should. The method by which factual damage should be included must then be decided. The option of just showing the damage in the reconciliation accounts is rejected. Instead the introduction of an additional income concept into the accounts, constant wealth national income is proposed. This Hicksian concept deducts from standard national income the damage to all produced goods lasting longer than a year. The concept is illustrated with guesstimates for the Netherlands, 1940–45. Finally, by way of an illustration, the paper employs 1945 estimates of damage in the Netherlands in order to arrive at a constant wealth national income for 1940–45. It is shown that, in 1938 prices, constant wealth national income is very much lower than standard national income and thus far better reflects the decline in prosperity during these years.     

NATIONAL ACCOUNTS ESTIMATION USING INDICATOR RATIOS

We propose a new approach to national accounts compilation, which also serves as a formalization of current compilation practices. When formalizing the procedure, a distinction is made between (basic) data, national accounts identities and so-called indicator ratios. The latter are ratios of or percentage relations between national accounts variables, such as the relation between output and value added. Indicator ratios are currently used in national accounts compilation practices in order to make adjustments to the basic data or to fill in missing data. The latter use is particularly relevant when basic data are scarce, which is the case not only in many developing countries, but also in developed countries when annual accounts are compiled for recent periods. The (basic) data, indicator ratios and identities together are used in a Bayesian approach to estimate the values of national accounts variables and analytical indicator ratios based thereon. The amendment of the current practices consists in introducing reliability intervals of basic data and indicator ratios, which allows for the use of a much larger number of indicator ratios in the compilation and checking of national accounts data. The Bayesian compilation approach makes it possible–in contrast to current practices–to use indicator ratios both as priors and as analytical indicators.     

A cost-benefit analysis for the economic growth in China

Currently, traditional development issues such as income inequality, depletion of natural resources, environmental pollution as well as retardation of infrastructure have occurred in China. In the future, more pressures would be imposed on China by the continuous fast development of industrialization, and with transfer of the world manufacture center to China. Sustainable development, including its economic, environmental and social elements, is a key goal of decisionmakers. This paper develops a methodology on cost benefit analysis of economic growth at macroscopic level to identify issues of China's sustainability. In order to address some important issues on how to make policies to improve the quality of economic growth, the CBA framework developed in this study analyses economic-ecological-social interaction, building three accounts that reflect three dimensions of sustainable development that includes 26 sub-models in all, and finally is integrated into an index as Net Progress Proceeds (NPP). The estimation methods of these submodels, such as cost of environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources and defensive expenditures are described in detail. Based on the framework and methods, this paper examines the costs and benefits of economic growth in three aspects of economy, ecology and society. The results illustrate that NPR of China's economic growth had been negative for a long time and has just became positive since year 2000 but was quite low. Even the best was only 1.6% in 2002 (the worst was − 24.2% in 1982). Based on the comparison between three accounts, we can draw a conclusion that ecological cost is the dominant factor that affects China's NPR. The empirical results show that if no other innovative measures or policies are taken in the future the costs of growth would outweigh its benefits, resulting in un-sustainability. Basically, the long-term economic growth would be unsustainable due to increasing environmental damage and depletion of natural resources. There are a few limitations that we consider need to be improved in our CBA framework and method, nevertheless they have many options that can be explored by policy makers, to make the development path more sustainable.     

THE REAL RATE OF U.S. NATIONAL SAVING

The conventional measure of national saving in U.S. accounts does not include saving in consumer durables, public investment, or intangible capital. It reflects a measure of net foreign investment that relates in considerable part to original cost rather than market values. It also does not include real capital gains.
Comprehensive, adjusted measures of national saving are calculated for as many of the years from 1946 to 1989 as relevant components are available. They generally suggest much larger rates of national saving than are usually recognized. They also cast a sharp and substantially different light on the likely effects of policies designed to increase provision for the future.     

AN EXAMINATION OF THE FEASIBILITY OF USING MONETARY DATA FOR NATIONAL INCOME ESTIMATES

In a number of underdeveloped countries today, adequate statistics for estimating national output by traditional national accounting methods are unavailable or unreliable. However, many of these same countries do publish data on monetary variables at an early stage in their development. These data can now be used to estimate national income.
In this study the money supply was defined to include all currency in circulation, private deposits subject to check at all banks and postal systems, all government deposits, and unused overdrafts less float. The national accounts data were taken from United Nations sources and data supplied by various foreign statistical offices. To make the accounts more comparable in terms of coverage and to limit reported income to the monetized sector of the economy, non-monetary imputations were deleted.
The monetary and national accounts data were combined in a multiple, stepwise regression. National income was used as the dependent variable and money supply and other data were used as the independent variables. The final estimating equations explained about 96 per cent of the variation in income between countries. Other tests were conducted using the currency ratio, transactions velocity, population, and per capita consumption. However, these variables did not augment the explanatory power of the regression equations.
When the equations were used to estimate national income for twenty-two under-developed countries, the derived estimates showed a high degree of concordance with reported income where it existed for comparative purposes. The results indicate that monetary data can be used to estimate national income for underdeveloped countries with a relatively high degree of accuracy, between countries, and from year to year within a country.     

NEW ESTIMATES OF SWEDISH HISTORICAL GDP SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY*

The first Swedish historical national accounts were compiled in the 1930s, and that pioneering work formed the main basis for later estimates until now. In this paper, an attempt to construct new historical accounts for 1800–1980 is presented. First, the methodology is discussed, particularly concerning series in constant prices adapted for analysis of growth and structural changes. In principle Paasche deflators should be used, but for such a long period they are inadequate due to the huge changes in the goods composition of production as well as of consumption and investment. Instead, a division of the whole period into shorter subperiods is made and within these, Paasche deflators are applied. Then the series for the deflation periods can be linked in order to arrive at longer series. Second, some findings of the work (still in progress) are reported. The new series show a slower growth rate in the second half of the nineteenth century than the earlier ones, and Sweden can internationally no longer be seen as the country where this period's economic miracle took place. Instead, concerning rate of growth of GDP per capita as well as its level, Sweden seems to have been a middle-way country compared to other European countries. In the first half of the 20th century, on the other hand, the growth rate was high in an international comparison. The Swedish sectoral changes followed a general pattern with decreasing agricultural and increasing industrial shares. The service share was not unusually high in the nineteenth century. Within this service production a very distinct pattern of structural change is evident. Finally, a plea is made for a regional breakdown of the national GDP data in order to obtain a better understanding of the economic growth and modernization process.     

Growth discontinuities at borders

I document the existence of discontinuities in short- and long-term growth rates of satellite-recorded nighttime lights per capita across national borders, with growth rates of nighttime lights increasing abruptly as one crosses a border from a slower-growing country into a faster-growing one. I show that growth discontinuities are not driven by any special set of borders, or by differences in geographic and climatic conditions on the different sides of borders. I investigate multiple explanations for growth discontinuities, including differences in the determinants of growth across borders and differences in the extent to which borders form barriers to flows of goods, capital or people. I present evidence that differences in the quality of the rule of law are consistently helpful in explaining differences in growth between two countries at their border, and conclude that national-level variables such as institutions and policies may have rapid and important effects on growth.     

The relationship between government accounts and national accounts, with special reference to the netherlands

National accounts are a macro-economic accounting system that is compiled on the basis of a globally harmonized accounting standard, that is SNA93/ESA95. To a large extent, the SNA93/ESA95 accounting principles are also suitable for government (micro-)accounting purposes, if only because the accounts drawn up according to this standard are comparable across (types of) units and over time. That facilitates performance monitoring and benchmarking. In addition, the ESA95 guidelines and procedures deal with innovative transactions and accounting, which increases the credibility of the accounts. Finally, accounts for government units are then directly comparable with the macroeconomic accounts, which facilitates the link between forecasts for the national economy and drawing up government budgets. This paper also describes the present conversion of government accounts to national accounts for the government sector in the Netherlands and the plans of the Dutch government to change from a cash-based to an accrual government accounting system.