The Compatibility of Red Book National Accounts Estimates with the Barna 1935 Input–Output Estimates

In 1952, Tibor Barna published an input–output table of the 1935 UK economy. From 1954 to 1972, a number of ‘Red Books’ published under the direction of Richard Stone provided national accounting statistics for 1920–38. Casual inspection suggests some serious disagreement between the two data sets, but much of this arises out of mismatching of incompatibly defined items. This paper assesses the compatibility of final demand and net output estimates that appear on the periphery of the Barna table with corresponding Red Book statistics. Given the admitted margins of error, an acceptable pattern of discrepancy emerges from the comparisons. Service industry incomes are the sole major exception to this finding.