Nordic historical National Accounts since the 1880s

Abstract

In many respects the history of National Accounts (NA) and of Historical National Accounts (HNA) is common to all the Nordic countries, The first rudimentary accounts can be found by the end of the nineteenth century while the first income tax statistics of the early twentieth century provided a further stimulus. It was the 1920s and the 1930s, however, that saw the real breakthrough. In Sweden it took the form of HNA, and in the other countries the form of NA, with Denmark and Norway in the lead. The commodity-flow method provided the common characteristic.

Later developments somewhat differed in the individual countries. All participated in the Kuznets project ofHNA. Denmark and Norway had obtained new series by the mid 1960s and the early 1970s. Sweden and Finland came later, at the end of the 1980s, and consequently today have the most up-to-date series. These though reveal differences in methodology and a new project has been started, whose aim is to revive the spirit of Nordic community.