ALBERT

Notizen: This article deals in an axiomatic manner with problems of definition, classification, and measurement in the national accounts. It argues that the elementary units which must be classified in national accounting are economic objects (real and financial), rather than transactions. The article defines briefly a set of postulates, and shows that the structure of a simple system of national accounting can be derived from them. There are twenty postulates—certain of them establishing basic categories such as sector, time, economic object, value (price); others establishing relations between categories (for example the notion of ownership); and others describing operations in which economic objects can be involved, such as production, final consumption, change of ownership, and change of debtor and creditor (in the case of financial objects). It is shown that the system of postulates makes it possible to consider a large number of accounting concepts (flows or stocks) as classes (baskets) of real objects (e.g., exports, real capital) or financial objects (e.g., payments, total debt of a sector). These concepts can be defined without reference to prices, although prices are necessary to measure them. Other concepts cannot be defined in this way in this system of postulates, for example value added, foreign balance, saving, net worth. However, it is possible to define magnitudes of the latter type and measure them in terms of value: for example, value added can be defined as the difference between the value of receipts and the value of outlays of a sector. In this way it is possible to establish algebraic relations among the national accounting concepts. (This article is a summary of certain parts of the doctoral thesis of the author, published in Norwegian in 1955.)

Notizen: It is only within the last two years that the published United Kingdom accounts have been extended to include sector financial accounts; their use for market analysis is, therefore, still in its infancy.The sectors and sub-sectors distinguished in the financial accounts agree very closely with those recommended by the Working Group on Financial Statistics of the Conference of European Statisticians. A major difference is that in the United Kingdom accounts particular emphasis is placed on the distinction between the public sector and the private sector. For this purpose the public sector consists not only of general government but also includes public corporations (that is, public non-financial corporate enterprises). The classification of assets and liabilities is based on a general list which is also similar to that developed by the Conference of European Statisticians.Because of the large capital formation of public corporations and local authorities, the public sector is normally a substantial borrower from the pirvate sector, although its borrowing requirements fluctuate considerably from quarter to quarter because of the uneven incidence of tax receipts. The personal sector provides about one-third of the total saving of the economy, much of which is in the form of contractual saving—through life assurance and superannuation funds and the repayment of house purchase loans. No direct information is available about transactions in stocks and shares by the personal sector, but it is estimated that the sector is a very large seller of securities and in recent years its sales have amounted to £700 million a year.One factor which is important in the analysis of financial accounts and which is not shown specifically as part of the system is the rate of interest. The proportion of personal saving going into the different forms of short term assets has tended to vary according to the relative rate of interest received. The rate of interest also affects the pattern of borrowing by public authorities.The United Kingdom prepares short term forecasts of national income and of the balance of payments, and also forecasts of the borrowing requirement of the public sector and of the central government in particular. For internal purposes, forecasts are made of the various ways in which the government is expected to finance its borrowing requirement. These forecasts provide a useful framework for considering monetary prospects and are particularly important for showing the relation between the forecasts of the balance of payments and of government borrowing from domestic sources, especially from the banks.

Notizen: After a short introduction, the first part of this paper (section 3 through 9) provides an outline of the revisions proposed to the System of National Accounts (SNA) of the United Nations which are now under discussion. These proposals were considered by an expert group at the end of 1964 and were accepted by the Statistical Commission of the United Nations in 1965 as the basis for further work on the extension and revision of the SNA. The aim of the revision is to provide a fully integrated system of accounts and balance sheets in which input-output, flows-of-funds and sector balance sheets are incorporated in a generalised accounting framework. Whereas the real side of the economy has been studied analytically in many countries (input-output analysis, demand analysis and so on) much less experience is available on modelling the financial side of the economy, apart from econometric work on saving behaviour, which is fairly widespread. Accordingly, the second part of the paper (sections 10 through 14) contains a discussion of financial model-building in which a number of possibilities are explored. The final topic discussed (section 15) is demographic accounting, by which is meant a framework for recording and analysing human, as opposed to economic, flows and stocks. The development of such a system arose out of the emphasis placed by the expert group on the integration of demographic and economic information.

Notizen: This paper is essentially a summary of the book Measuring the Nation's Wealth (Volume 29, Studies in Income and Wealth, New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1964), which is the report of study directed by the author. The purpose o f the study was to assess the problems and possibilities of conducting a national census of real wealth as a basis for continuing wealth and balance sheet estimates for the U.S. economy, by major sector.It is stressed that the balance sheets and wealth estimates should be designed as a consistent part of an integrated system of national income accounts. Thus, valuation (at market prices and/or depreciated replacement costs), sectoring, and type-of-asset detail in the basic data and derived estimates should be compatible with the flow estimates contained in the economic accounts. Consistency of stock and flow estimates facilitates analysis of inter-relationships, and is helpful in the estimation process.It is recommended that in the U.S. asset data by broad categories be collected as part of the recurring economic censuses and other reporting systems, but that detail on fixed reproducible assets (construction and equipment) at cost, by year or period of acquisition, be obtained from a small sample of respondents in each industry. The detail would be useful in its own right, and also permit revaluation of the assets by use of price indexes and depreciation rates to a current depreciated replacement cost basis. Where feasible, respondent estimates of market values would also be obtained.The proposal is thus a compromise between the Japanese 1955 sample survey of assets, and the detailed wealth inventory of the U.S.S.R. which was begun in 1959. Preliminary work is now underway in the U.S. federal statistical agencies to expand collection of asset data, and to prepare comprehensive wealth estimates in the framework of the national income accounts.

Notizen: Ľutilisation du SCN actuel pour les besoins de la coopération économique internationale est considérée ci-après à la lumière des expériences accumulées au sein de la Communauté Economique Européenne.Ľexpérience des années récentes prouve que si, dans une première étape, le SCN a pu servir de cadre général ďanalyse économique, ce cadre s'est rapidement révélé insuffisant lorsqu'il s'est agi de confronter des structures et des politiques nationales ou de définir des politiques coordonnées dans les domaines économique, social ou financier. Les travaux menés dans différents domaines ont montré la nécessitéďétendre, de détailler, de modifier et de préciser le système actuel de comptabilité nationale.Une question importante concerne ľintérêt de faire apparaître ou ďéliminer du système comptable les différences institutionnelles existant entre pays. Bien qu'à cet égard ľavis des utilisateurs ne soit pas toujours unanime, ľexpérience plaide en faveur ďun système reflétant pleinement les différences réelles de structure entre pays, mais suffisamment détaillé afin de permettre les regroupements fonctionnels nécessaires à certaines analyses.Ľarticle se termine par un bref rappel des principales critiques adressées au SCN actuel par ceux qui, dans le cadre de la Communauté Economique Européenne, se servent de la comptabilité nationale, critiques auxquelles la révision du SCN apportera, espérons-le, une réponse satisfaisante.

Notizen: The author believes that the theoretical controversies relating to the two concepts of production have reached a dead end, and that the answer to these questions must be sought in the results of empirical research. It is to this end that he presents the results which he has arrived at in his computation of Yugoslav national income according to the Yugoslav methodology, which shares the material product concept, and the methodology of the United Nations, which is typical of the enlarged concept of production.In comparing the results of the computations according to the two methodologies, the author concludes that in spite of conceptual differences the deviation of the Yugoslav estimates from the values calculated following the system of the UN is relatively modest (4.2%) if domestic product at factor cost is used. The difference relative to aggregates calculated at market price rises to 13.6%. The author explains these differences by the fact that all the Yugoslav aggregates are computed at market prices, and that services financed by budgetary contributions, which amount to 80% of all services, have found their place in the market prices of material production. He finds that the choice of prices used for calculation has a greater weight for the computation of production than conceptual differences in the methodology of the computations.

Notizen: This paper is concerned with the influence of different estimation procedures on the data for real output by industry group of a number of O.E.C.D. countries. The authors have examined the methods and indicators used in preparing sector real output data and have tried to assess the effect of the different methods on the recorded changes of sector real output. The data for real output, employment and productivity are compared for the different sectors and countries. The comparison between sectors lays particular emphasis on the dichotomy between the services and non-service sectors of the economy. In this comparison as well as in inter-country comparison it is seen that the data are influenced to a considerable extent by different methods. The survey of estimation methods also shows the incidence of use of double deflation techniques and other methods in the different countries, and the extent to which quality change, output specification and valuation problems are reflected in the different methods.

Notizen: This paper examines differentials in output, employment and productivity across seventeen service industries in the United States from 1939 to 1963. Included are 9 retail trades and 8 services mostly from the personal service group. The industries chosen were those for which it was possible to obtain from available data reasonably comparable measures of output and input for selected years since 1939. Also, they are industries for which it is possible to calculate a measure of real output that is not based on labor input.Sixteen of the industries show positive rates of change of real output per man. Thus there appears to be no basis for assuming that productivity cannot or does not increase in industries providing services. However, the rate of increase for the group as a whole was not as rapid as in manufacturing or in goods production as a whole.The data for the seventeen industries give strong support to the hypothesis of a positive correlation between industry rates of growth and rates of change of productivity. The correlations are of the same order of magnitude as those found by other investigators in studies of manufacturing industries.The coefficient of correlation between growth of output per man and growth of output is .93; between growth of output per man and growth of employment it is .54 for 1939–1963. The comparable coefficients for the 1948–1963 period are .70 and .13.The results also parallel those reported for manufacturing in one other respect, namely, the absence of any correlation between changes in output per man and changes in compensation per man.The paper concludes with a discussion of the problems encountered in measuring changes in real output in these industries and presents some alternative estimates based on different concepts and different sources.

Notizen: After an introduction setting out the general state of work on the national accounts in the Middle East the author considers the principal uses of national accounts statistics in less developed countries. The first group of uses discussed is in connexion with the measurement of growth and the making of international comparisons. The author is of the opinion that in many cases the primary statistical series are so weak that the fact they they are combined together into a series called national income or gross domestic product lends to them a significance which they do not really possess. The real problem is to improve the quality of the primary series.A second use of national accounts statistics is in connexion with fiscal and budgetary policy. In the statistically advanced countries this is one of the most important uses but in the less developed countries budgetary policy has not yet reached a level of sophistication which would call for the use of national accounts data. Moreover, the time factor involved in assembling accurate national accounts estimates militates against their effective use for short term forecasting.The author considers that the most important use for national accounts statistics is to provide a framework for development planning. The United Nations system is not altogether appropriate for this purpose. It grew up primarily as a system for recording income flows but in development planning one is concerned equally with commodity flows with a great deal of attention being focussed upon intermediate products. The proposals of the working group of African Statisticians for an adaptation of the S.N.A. to African countries represents a most important advance in this respect.In the final section of the paper the author advocates a broader definition of capital formation to include developmental expenditure which is not properly defined as fixed capital formation. Education expenditure is cited as an example. It is suggested that in the national accounts it would be desirable to operate with gross concepts. However, the growth of the capital stock is obviously important in less developed countries and it is suggested that statistical techniques be devised to measure it directly wherever possible. Finally, attention is drawn to the ambiguities and weaknesses in the concept of residence as used at present in the S.N.A.

Notizen: Cet article examine comment les calculateurs modernes servent ou pourraient servir en comptabilité nationale, soit pour ľutilisation des comptes, soit pour leur préparation.Du premier point de vue ľauteur insiste ďabord sur la complexité croissante des comptes nationaux qui rend difficile leur usage à partir de la forme classique de tableaux imprimés et tend à rendre nécessaire leur transcription sous forme de cartes perforées, cequi permettra de faire à la machine un certain nombre de travaux élémentaires sur les comptes.On peut également penser que les calculateurs permettraient des sondages rapides sur certains éléments des comptes en cours de préparation.Enfin, les utilisations des calculateurs électroniques pour ľanalyse des comptes, ľétude des modèles de projection et leur résolution sont bien connues.En ce qui concerne ľutilisation des calculateurs pour la préparation des comptes ľauteur montre que, étant donné le caractère imparfait du système statistique dans de nombreux pays, les comptes économiques des années passées sont en partie préparés àľaide de véritables modèles qui permettent de passer des données de base aux comptes et qui peuvent dans certains cas être résolus àľaide de calculateurs électroniques.Là oùľinformation statistique est meilleure, des éléments des comptes peuvent être calculés directement par agrégation des données élémentaires. On peut donc penser qu'une époque viendra où la plus grande partie des comptes nationaux sera préparée àľaide de machines électroniques à partir des données de base.On peut alors imaginer un monde où les transactions élémentaires seraient enregistrées au moment où elles seraient réalisées, rendant ainsi entièrement automatique la préparation des comptes nationaux. Mais alors les machines pourraient réunir les modèles de préparation et les modèles ďutilisation des comptes. Ľétape intermédiaire que constitue la préparation et la publication des comptes sous la forme actuelle deviendrait alors inutile.

Notizen: The paper discusses national balance sheets in the light of the proposals for their inclusion in the revised SNA. The author uses his own estimated national balance sheet of the United Kingdom as a basis for discussing the problems encountered in the compilation of national balance sheets, and the greater part of the paper is concerned with questions of valuation, classification and statistical source material. The concluding section deals briefly with the structure of the national balance sheet of the United Kingdom and compares its structure with that of the national balance sheet of the United States. Provisional national balance sheets of the United Kingdom for each of the five years 1957 to 1961 are presented.

Notizen: Both the yearly and the quarterly national accounts of Norway are derived with intensive use of electronic computers, punchcards and magnetic tapes.The introduction of the paper gives a short description of the Norwegian national accounting system. Four aspects are stressed. First, the accounts are built up by the production approach with the main purpose of, on the one hand, showing the domestic product at market prices by industry of origin and, on the other hand, showing a detailed breakdown by categories of expenditure. Second, the main part of the system consists of an input/output matrix of about 1700 commodities, 130 industries, and 150 final demand sectors. The input/output table is thus not made separately but is the main body of the national accounts. Third, this annual input/output table is used as a basis for estimating quarterly accounts. Fourth, an econometric model for analysing and forecasting developed by the Norwegian Central Bureau of Statistics is closely linked to the national accounts.The paper concentrates on how the computers and punchcards are used. It describes how all available information on the supply and use of commodities, prices, etc., is brought together. As far as possible punchcards from the basic statistics are taken over for further processing. As the end result each flow in the national accounts is represented by a punchcard.The paper discusses what has been gained by switching from worksheets to punchcards. There are advantages during the work and there are advantages of having the final results on punchcards.The final sections describe how the punched cards for the yearly accounts data are used as basis for preliminary estimates of quarterly accounts and also in a model for forecasting.

Notizen: (1) The primary contribution from the computer's application to the national accounts may well be to erode the line between micro and macro analysis. Key macro totals in the accounts sum individual company reports. The computer permits us to develop distributions of these reports. Such distributions, regularly presented, would permit discovery of the first forerunners of change, would help distinguish, e.g., widespread strength in an export drive or a profits surge, from participation by a few major concerns that dominate the aggregate.(2) The strikingly different parameters in cross section and time series studies (e.g., price elasticity of housing) will in some measure reflect incomparability between the micro data that enter into each. The computer makes possible the use of the wide array of micro data that really underly the accounts to develop consistent analyses of time series (of both aggregates and distributions) and cross section analyses.(3) The inconsistencies now imbedded in the accounts but gilded over by the abilities of the estimators are well-known. Discussions of wage price policy rest on data for wages that have no necessary compatibility with data on profits, etc. But since 1,500 corporations account for at least half of U.S. net income, sales, and investment, the computer can test the consistency of reports made by different units in these firms to different agencies—a process totally out of the question before the computer.(4) The potential that the computer offers for prompt revisions in the accounts; for revisions by systematic rule; for tests of sensitivity of the entire set of accounts to particular tailor-made adjustments, is clear.(5) Company purchase orders and accounts are increasingly recorded on cards or tapes. From these we may derive input-output detail and process detail that are light years better than those now feasible from intermittent survey aggregates.

Notizen: It is argued that the conventions of an accounting system, such as the S.N.A., are a matter of convenience. The treatment of education as a current expenditure, instead of as a form of capital formation, derives from the Keynesian system, and is not appropriate for dynamic problems of developing countries, where weaknesses in education are often the main “bottleneck” in the process of development. In such countries, expenditure on education clearly yields its benefits mainly in the longer run. To treat this as a consumption item biases policy in the direction of using financial resources for fixed capital rather than human investment, and may cause aid agencies to penalize countries which expand their educational systems. A similar problem arises on other expenditures such as health, but the case for treating them as investment is not so strong.To treat educational expenditure as part of capital formation logically requires two major changes. First education needs to be removed from private and public consumption, and for this purpose a fairly broad definition of what is education should be used. Secondly, the stock of educational capital should be valued. The valuation problems are, however, severe. Variations in cost components make historic cost of little value as a yardstick, and calculations of future returns are fraught with difficulties. Using replacement costs, which seems the best method, involves the construction of education profiles in physical terms which can then be valued by present or by standardised costs. The depreciation of human capital through mortality and retirement can be allowed for by applying national average rates to these physical profiles.Switching educational expenditure from current to capital accounts involves no serious practical problem. However, although there should logically be an allowance for depreciation on human capital, this is not recommended; single monetary measures of educational stock are not very meaningful, and this would involve changing the definition of “net” aggregates. Development of statistics of educational stocks and flows in physical terms—the beginnings of “demographic accounting” fully integrated with the rest of national accounting—is strongly advocated.

Notizen: The now urgent problem in the field is to translate into practice the theoretical agreement, slowly reached over the past two decades, on the need for and feasibility of sectorized national balance sheets.The paper discusses the five main uses of national balance sheets, viz. (1) the study of the relations among assets and liabilities at one point of time in one country, particularly the position of financial institutions; (2) the analysis of changes in one country's financial structure between several balance sheet dates; (3) the comparison of balance sheet structure at one date among two or more countries; (4) the comparison of the financial development of several countries for at least two but usually more numerous balance sheet dates; and (5) the use of selected balance sheet items, e.g., reproducible tangible assets or liquid financial assets, in econometric models.Examples are presented of the first three uses, viz. for (1) an eleven sector balance sheet matrix for the U.S. as of the end of 1962; for (2) an unsectored national balance sheet of the U.S. in 1900, 1912, 1929, 1939, 1945 and 1958; and for (3) a comparison of condensed unsectored national balance sheets for a dozen countries (USA, UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Norway, Italy, Japan, Israel, Mexico, India and the USSR) for a date in the neighborhood of 1960.

Notizen: A derivation is presented of the variance-covariance matrix of endogenous variables in a linear dynamic system, given the variances and covariances of exogenous variables and disturbances. A general formulation of the stabilization problem for linear systems is proposed, using as a measure for stability a function variances and covariances of the endogenous variables.

Notizen: The dominating characteristic of most economic time series is the trend and the basie problem in the theory of trend movements consist in discovering the basie causes of long-term changes in the series. The relevance for the theory of economic growth is the determination of economic growth and the extent to which it can be influenced by economic policy. It is commonly believed that, since national product is perhaps our best measure of economic achievement, we may best denne economic growth as a sustained inerease in aggregate national product or national income. Studies of economic growth almost invariably treat longterm change in the national product as the most basic index of national economic achievement and associate other variables with it as causes and effeets. Whereas the theory of trend movements helps to explain the rising movement of certain economic variables; it also determines the influence of such factors as population growth. Perhaps it also creates a better foundation for the analysis of economic dynamics. Abramovitz (1959) has emphasized the need for empirical studies that can give meaning to secular changes in the rate of growth of national product or national income.

Notizen: In this paper, the expected return-variance of return hypothesis of investment behavior is applied to the problem ot the wealth-holder's choice of the maturity distributions of his assets and liabilities. It is assumed that the only asset forms available to the wealth-holder are bonds homogeneous in all respects except: the dates on which they promise with certainty to pay their face values plus interest in a single lump sum. Bonds are assumed to be available from a continuous spectrm of maturities in infinitely divisible denominations. The wealth-holder is assuined, in addition, to make risky forecasts of the future level of interest rates.Under these assumptions, the wealth-holder's networth is a random variable with given mean and variance. Expected net-worth and its variance are shown to be functions of a set of moments describing the distributions by maturity date of the wealth-holder assets and liabilities, i. e., the wealth-holder views the maturity distributions of his assets and liabilities as statistical frequency functions capable of being described by a set of statistical moments. These moments are then treated as the wealth-holder's decision variables to be adjusted to maximize a utility function over expected net-worth and its variance. Optima 1 values of these moments then describe the optimal maturity profile of the wealth-holder's balance sheet.

Notizen: The economic importance of the public enterprises has been established on the basis of the following criteria: Own capital, personnel employed, gross added value and various factors giving rise to appreciation.This survey is of a purely preliminary nature, since, in actual fact, given the present situation of the published data, it has not so far been possible to arrive at more precise figures, taking enterprise by enterprise according to a systematic plan.Moreover, it would have been desirable to fill out the above-mentioned criteria by data concerning turnover and investment, As the data collected in the course of this study are so extremely fragmentary, we have been obliged to exclude any statement concerning these two factors.

Notizen: Gerhard Weisser, Professor at Cologne University: Grenzen und Probleme des Planung Capitalism, Market Socialism and Central Planning-Readings in Comparative Economic Systems (ed. Wayne A. LEEMAN)Francesco VITO et al.: Lo sviluppo economico regionaleNicolas Spulber, Professor of Economics, Indiana University: Soviet Strategy for Economic Growth and Foundations of Soviet Strategy for Economic GrowthCharles Bettelheim: L'lnde indipendante, Paris, Librairie Armand Colin, 1962, 526pp.Pierre DES Mazis: Le vocabulaire de l'économie politique. Essai sur i'apport du langage commun Deuxième Conférence des coopératives de I'Arctique – Second Conference on Arctic Co-operatiues (trilingual document in French, English and Eskimo).

Notizen: Joseph Stassart (Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Liége University): Les avantages et les inconvénients économiques d'une population stationnaireAlain BARRÈRE, Professor, Faculty of Law and Economics, University of Paris: Economie et institutions financièresAlain Bienaymé: Croissance et monnaie en plein emploi— Contribution à l'étude des effets du plein emploi sur la relation entre les flux réels et les flux monétairesPhilipp Herder-Dorneich: Zur Theorie der sozialen SteuerungLeo Solari: L'impresa pubblica nel Trattato Istitutivo della Comunità Economica EuropaVerstaatlichung in Österreich (Nationalisations in Austria), Ed. Prof. Dr. Wilhelm WeberDr. E. Haselmann: Aus eigener KraftLaurence D. Haber (in collaboration with), Chief, Economic and Social Surveys Branch, Division of Research and Statistics (U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Social Security Administration): The Disabled Worker under OASDI