ALBERT

Notes: “The whole question of making inter-spatial comparisons between countries is a most complicated and hazardous business” (Mr. Campion); international comparisons of a particular value aggregate between countries present a difficult problem connected with the conversion of national value aggregates into a comparable magnitude. This paper presents an alternative approach in that an internationally comparable value aggregate for each country is prepared by the international average prices of commodities which are determined simultaneously with the partial exchange rates of national currencies to a standard currency. The calculated partial exchange rates are so defined as to reflect the purchasing power of national currencies in respect of the group of commodities selected. Consequently, the resulting value aggregate for international comparison has a quantity dimension, eliminating the effect due to the different purchasing power of national currencies in which original prices are quoted. The other methods of international comparison so far being used by other research workers, such as C. Clerk and M. Gilbert and his associates, are examined in the light of the properties of the present method and the crucial differences are delineated. Using the method proposed, an international comparison is made of the aggregate value of agricultural products for 11 selected countries in the world, with sub-divisions into two regions.

Notes: The objective of this paper is to provide a conceptual basis for separating social product and social factor input accounts into price and quantity components. Despite the essential similarity between concepts of real product and real factor input, the measurement of social factor outlay in constant prices is not well established in social accounting practice.Production accounts are constructed for the United States in current and constant prices, including social product and social factor outlay, for the period 1929–1967. The resulting estimates are applied to the measurement of total factor productivity and the study of the responsiveness of product and factor intensities to price changes.

Notes: Macroeconomic productivity in Israel is here conceived as comparison of output with factor inputs during given periods, and as creation of sustained capacity out of given resource increments. However, present social accounting practice prevents full implementation of this second approach.In contrast to nine European countries, only one third of the rapid growth rate of Israel in 1950–1965 is “explained” by the “Residual” because of relatively large infrastructural investments and of growth problems. One of these problems is inflationary pressures which caused productivity increases to restrain the rise of product prices by 30 per cent only below the rise of input prices. The real productivity gain accrued, in Israel and in the U.S.A. (1919–1957), nearly fully to labor because unit returns to capital remained constant whereas those to labor sharply rose.Some refinements of the statistical models are attempted by incorporating the utilization rates of labor and capital (for industry); and by measuring product from the uses, instead of from the income, side, adding the differences to the capital shares. This makes distributive factor shares nearly constant as postulated by Cobb-Douglas.In order to get a basis for appraising efficiency in creating long-term capacity, that part of product increments is measured which represents rises of p.c. final domestic uses and changes in the export surplus. This “net margin” formed in Israel one fifth and in the U.S.A. (1889–1913) much less of incremental product. Though in Israel one quarter, and in the U.S.A. over half (in 1919–1953) of the net margin went into sonsumption, large proportions of it presumably actually created human capacity. A comparison of product growth rates with population growth, and of the breakdown of the resulting p.c. product growth rates into full final uses, for Israel and two groups, of developed and less developed countries in the fifties shows, inter-alia, that in the L.D.C. only small proportions of their presumable capacity creation was financed by net capital inflows, thus imposing upon them domestic saving rates which presumably are too high to be sustainable.

Notes: There are both major philosophical and major econometric questions to be faced in the measurement of inequality of income. The scaling of different sizes and types of families can never be unique and may be a function of real income. However, even subjective guesses may be better than doing nothing. Demographic changes, such as the increase in pensioners with the increase in life expectancy, affects the distribution of income, and it seems desirable to estimate the separate effect of their influence. The extent to which the inequality of incomes is reduced by all taxes and benefits combined has remained remarkably constant in the U.K. over the period for which estimates have been made (1937–1967). The progressive effect of all taxes and benefits combined is largely the result of benefits (in cash and kind). The stability in the degree of inequality of original income is much more difficult to explain. A number of factors which reduce or increase inequality can be identified for further analysis.

Notes: In the introduction of the paper, Economic Accounts are defined as a set of statistics useful in economic analysis and region is defined as a province. The paper is divided into four sections the first of which contains a brief historical outline of the development of demands for provincial economic accounts and the Dominion Bureau of Statistics' response to these needs. Apart from a description of the more well-known conceptual difficulties, some of the fundamental problems of the usefulness and applicability of a national accounting framework to the regional scene are discussed. The resource problems of constructing analytically meaningful and reliable as well as spatially reconcilable regional accounts are described.Section II outlines the impact of present policies and problems on the development of regional statistics. It describes the reasons for the Bureau's desire to strengthen its data base in regional terms and the decision to await possible construction of regional accounts till the regional data base has been fleshed out in a more systematic manner. With the development of the latter, the ability, advantages and disadvantages of the provinces undertaking their own estimates must also be more fully explored. The third part of the paper deals with an over-view of work in Canada on provincial accounts carried out by organizations other than the Dominion Bureau of Statistics. Section IV gives a very summary description of the data gaps which exist in presently available regional statistics.

Notes: PRIM I is a numerical model which has been extensively used as a basis for an income policy in Norway in recent years. It is a static, cost-push, input-output model. Wage rates, agricultural prices, productivities and world market prices are treated as exogenous variables, and the model derives short-term changes in income shares and in the national price level from changes in these exogenous variables. A key feature of the model is a distinction between “exposed industries” which are subject to strong foreign price competition, and “sheltered industries” which are relatively free of such competition. These two groups of industries are found to react with very different pricing policies in response to increases in costs; furthermore, possibly for technological reasons, the export industries have greater scope than the majority of the sheltered industries for compensating cost increases through productivity gains. These two facts are shown to have important implications for a price and income policy. It is demonstrated, i.a. that the goal of a stable national price level is, in general, inconsistent with the maintenance of stable income shares when exchange rates are kept constant.

Notes: In a recent issue of the Review of Income and Wealth[1], Uma Datta Roy Choudhury presented some results on consumption and saving functions in India. While the study is interesting, some of the results are quite peculiar. Thus she reports a marginal propensity to save of 0.88 for the urban sector, an abnormally high figure. Other available evidence points to a much lower figure. Again she reports a negative marginal propensity to consume out of permanent income for urban households. This makes no economic sense. Furthermore her attempts at explaining urban consumption behaviour are not very successful. In this paper, we shall show that these suspicious results are the consequences of the measurement and definitions of the variables, and the specification of the functions. Once these shortcomings are removed, we obtain more satisfactory and more plausible results.In the first section we present a critique of Mrs. Roy Choudhury's article. In the second section we present our results. The last section summarizes the conclusions.

Notes: This paper compares the income distribution of Canada and the United States as well as other characteristics of the population such as the labour force and income trends in the two countries in the post-war years. In both countries family income distributions show similar degrees of inequality and similar movements in real incomes through time. However, an examination of Canadian data suggests that differences do exist in underlying patterns. For example, there are greater earnings differentials between skilled and unskilled workers in Canada than in the United States while on the other hand in the United States greater differences exist between family incomes with heads in different age groups than is the case in Canada.

Notes: The income distribution statistics which are based on income for a single year show a far larger inequality of income than actually exists. The distribution of annual incomes differs from the distribution of lifetime income partly because of short run fluctuations because of such things as sickness, unemployment, and unusual gains, and partly because different individuals are at different points in their life cycles. The vertical distribution of income can be considered to be the distribution of lifetime income. The horizontal distribution can be considered to be the differences arising in the current period due to short run fluctuations and differences in the age-income cycle of persons. The observed annual income distribution statistics are a mixture of the vertical and horizontal distributions. The estimation of the lifetime income distribution implies discounting, and also raises questions as to the treatment of transfers, subsidies, public investments and taxes. However, statistics based upon a mixture of the horizontal and vertical distributions of income are of no interest.