REGIONAL POLICY-MAKING AND REGIONAL DATA BASES

This paper deals with regional accounting problems in Finland. Regional policy planning problems and special regional characteristics of the country are discussed as a background to the development of regional accounts. Accounting problems such as regional division, regionalization methods, general and special solutions to problems affecting specific sectors of the accounts, and problems in allocating production across regions are dealt with in the paper. In addition, supplementary data such as state income and expenditure data by region and regional input-output calculations, both of which may be needed in regional policy-making, are discussed. In Finland, both types of data have been included in a regional data bank compiled by the Central Statistical Office. For the future, monitoring regional standards of living and observing differences in welfare and in production by region remain important challenges for the development of regional data systems.