AN EXTENDED MEASURE OF GOVERNMENT PRODUCT: PRELIMINARY RESULTS FOR THE UNITED STATES, 1946–76 |
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| Authors: | Robert Eisner David H. Nebhut |
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| Affiliation: | Northwestern University and U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, respectively. The authors enjoyed the critical financial support of National Science Foundation grant SOC77-17555 for the Distributional and Behavioral Implications of Total Income. None of these institutions is responsible for the views expressed here. David Reishus has meticulously programmed all of the tabular presentations and most of the underlying calculations. The authors are also grateful for the assistance of Paul Peiper, Emily Simons and Stuart Weiner and, most importantly, to many at the Bureau of Economic Analysis for unpublished data and guidance in their use. The estimates presented here for the government sector postdate those included in Eisner (1980b). Still later estimates, differing from these by imputing real rather than nominal interest, are to be found in Eisner, Simons, Peiper and Bender (1981). |
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| Abstract: | Expanded measures of government output include imputed values of the services of government capital, uncompensated factor services of military draftees and jurors, and net revaluations, as well as the usually included compensation of employees. The government output is allocated to consumption, capital formation and product intermediate to other sectors, on the basis of its classification in ten broad functions: defense, space research, education, health, sanitation, transportation, parks and recreation, natural resources, welfare, and general administration. Final government product in 1976, including $116 billion in defense and $125 billion in education, amounted to $450.5 billion, which was 26.5 percent of the 1976 GNP. This final government product corresponded to the BEA measure of $191.6 billion.
Total capital formation related to government is defined to include both government product which enters into capital formation in other sectors and government expenditures for its own capital accumulation. After a more rapid rate of growth in previous years, this total government capital formation in the United States in 1976 is found to exceed gross private domestic investment. A significant but only minor portion was found to be constituted by government expenditures for capital goods and change in government inventories. Investment in research and development, health and, particularly, education and training, were dominant components in capital formation related to government. |
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