ALBERT

Notes: 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.)

Notes: 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.

Notes: 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.

Notes: 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.

Notes: 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.

Notes: The purpose of this paper is to develop methods for the measurement of real capital input. These methods are based on perpetual inventory estimates of capital stock and corresponding estimates of capital service prices. Stocks and service prices are adjusted for relative utilization of capital. The resulting estimates represent a separation of income from capital into price and quantity components. Estimates of capital input in current and constant prices are constructed for corporate business, non-corporate business, and households and non-profit institutions in the United States for the period 1929–1967. These estimates are prepared in a form suitable for integration into the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts.

Notes: This paper attempts to measure the rate of change in the size distribution of wages over time in a rigorous, analytic way, and to relate that change to the business cycle. The basic problem for which this paper provides a solution is to relate changes in a size distribution to levels of and changes in single-dimensioned variables (unemployment, Gross National Product, and the consumers price index). Let F stand for the cumulative relative size distribution of wages, a function of wages. F takes on values zero through one. Let F̄ be a given value of F, e.g., F̄= 0.25. The proposed solution to the basic problem is to measure the rate of change in consecutive F's at F̄. The composite of such measurements at F̄ over time forms a vector, the length of which depends upon the number of time periods observed. The number of vectors thus derived depends upon the number of values of F̄ selected. The various vectors are then related to the general economic conditions and the respective values of F̄. The general economic conditions have a differential effect on the various vectors; e.g., those wage earners with relatively low wages are affected differently by a given turn of the business cycle than are those with high wages.The paper includes several supplementary investigations: (a) estimating each of the annual cumulative relative size distributions of wages for a specific analytic function, (b) relating analytically the size distribution construct to the Lorenz curve concept and the Gini coefficient, (c) predicting and simulating size distributions for various economic conditions, (d) formulating tax trade-offs, and (e) suggesting further uses and extensions.

Notes: This paper reports on the results of the bilateral study of the comparison of levels of labor productivity in industry between Czechoslovakia and France in 28 branches of industry. Because of the importance of common studies of the questions of productivity of labor and its international comparison, the Economic Commission for Europe of the U.N. decided several years ago to introduce a concrete programme of work in this sphere. This study was made jointly by Czechoslovakia and France. The present paper reports on the first stage of the study, giving results based on physical unit methods. The second stage of the work includes comparisons for branches of industry not covered in this paper, on the basis of value indicator methods; detailed results will be published in respective U.N. series to the end of 1969 (Series Conf. Eur. Stats.).

Notes: This paper presents the characteristics of the National Accounting System of Hungary and outlines its development in the last decades and the insufficiencies still existing. Hungary has joined with great interest in the work performed within the frame of the United Nations Statistical Commission concerning the development of the Systems of National Accounts, being interested in applying—as far as possible—the results of the revision of the SNA and MPS in its national practice. The paper first presents a conceptual matrix containing all the major items in the MPS system in order to explain the contents of the items and the interdependencies among them. In this connection a brief account is given of the major differences between the SNA and MPS. The following part of the paper presents the National Accounting System introduced in Hungary in 1968. It is put also within the framework of a matrix, which supplies the items of both the SNA and MPS by means of simple aggregation as well as satisfying the national requirements, so that it is possible to compare the structure and development of the Hungarian economy with those of any other countries. The major differences between the Hungarian system and the current MPS and the revised SNA are then presented.

Notes: Book reviewed in this article:BRAWRS, W. K.—Input-Output Analyse en Internationale Economische Integratie, Preface by W. Leontief and with English Summary (Input-Output Analysis and International Economic Integration).

Notes: Estimates of gross domestic product have been produced by various writers or agencies for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and for Wales there are estimates of expenditure also; but only a very tentative attempt has hitherto been made at estimates for the English regions, mainly because the data present difficulties. In the present investigation, in which the estimates in the Bluebook on National Income and Expenditure are partitioned between regions, item by item, a production method was first explored, but this was replaced by use of Inland Revenue data on employment and self-employment income, and production and miscellaneous sources on profits etc. Estimates of expenditure raise particular difficulties in regard to private capital formation and, for different reasons, some parts of public current expenditure.The estimates have been used to throw light on interregional variations in income produced per head and earnings per head, and their relation to activity rates and industrial structure. The flows of property income, and of public transfers of purchasing-power and benefits between regions are also explored, along with regional current balances and evidence bearing on differences in pressure of demand. Finally, the scope for the development of regional social accounting in the United Kingdom is discussed.

Notes: Regional information designs are tools for decision makers at subnational levels; their principal purpose is to improve the dialogue between the decision maker and the analyst as a means of improving the quality of policy decisions. This paper first examines key characteristics of regional accounts and regional information systems of relevance primarily at the state or province level. Then the nature and scope of regional decisions are reviewed with a view of delineating the problems encountered in developing systematic regional information to help make those decisions. Both policy and program decisions are considered in terms of scanning the horizon for potential opportunities and problems and of identifying preferred solutions to the problems. Finally, one regional information design is sketched out which classifies in an orderly fashion the environmental and program information useful in regional decision making.

Notes: This paper treats three subjects:(1) In Sections II and III there is given a general analysis of revisions in national income data, namely the sources of revisions are enumerated and the conclusions that might be drawn are discussed in some detail.(2) Section IV gives a description of the history of revisions in national income estimates for the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany) for the period 1949–1965. The general revisions are classified according to their causes.(3) Sections V to VII give a statistical analysis of the revisions described in Section IV. Revisions in the level and in the linear annual change are characterized by their mean and their mean absolute deviation. Theil's coefficient of inequality is computed and on the basis of its decomposition a kind of analysis of variance is carried out.

Notes: This paper is concerned with an examination of growth trends of the Indian economy between 1860 and 1960. This examination commences with the numerous studies bearing on the more recent part of this period, from about 1900 to 1960. These studies are shown to vary greatly in coverage and comprehensiveness, and their differences and individual shortcomings are assessed. Nevertheless, these studies conclude, without exception, that the Indian economy remained virtually stationary in this period, especially in terms of negligible growth in per capita real income. In contrast to periods since 1900, the study of economic growth during the earlier period has suffered academic neglect. There are only two major studies which make an attempt to examine economic trends in this period. Both these studies are found wanting with respect to concepts and procedures. The period from 1860 to 1913 presents serious problems in any study since there is a paucity of statistics which are at all reliable and useful. The most promising approach for overcoming this deficiency is to develop better sectoral statistics rather than to rely on aggregative data even when available. In order to gain a better understanding of the growth trends of the Indian economy over this period, the author constructed indices of major economic activities. These indices demonstrate that relatively high rate of economic growth prevailed in India before 1890. Subsequent developments in the Indian economy seem to consist of minor changes in the magnitudes of economic variables rather than fundamental structural changes. Thus, the Indian economy is shown to have enjoyed relatively high rates of growth only in the initial three decades of the hundred-year period, 1860–1960.

Notes: This paper reviews some of the ideas that have been expressed regarding the development of national financial accounts. It concludes that a consensus is emerging that a set of sector financing statements and balance sheets, based on a monetary survey and incorporating liquidity criteria, can contribute to the understanding of the operation of an economy.

Notes: This paper is in part directed towards a partial examination of Canadian concepts and methods used in the deflation of constant price estimates of gross domestic product from both an expenditure and industry-of-origin point of view, and in part toward certain problems arising in the development of a conceptually balancing set of accounts in real terms. It also provides reference material to allow the reader to pursue the detailed methodology and data underlying the Canadian constant price accounts.

Notes: The increased role of monetary and other financial variables has required the introduction of a quantitative framework for monetary policy planning. This has been found in a planning procedure based on flow-of-funds accounts. The very comprehensive structure of these accounts is relied upon to provide to policy makers with quantitative indications as to policy goals and measures for their implementation, and at the same time, to ensure a consistent incorporation of monetary planning in general economic planning.There are annual and monthly plans. Annual planning involves two stages. The first is projection of flow-of-funds accounts on the basis of appropriate relationships, historical trends, institutional changes, economic policy targets, etc. The final result of this stage of planning is a projection of the Monetary Sector transactions as residuals, including changes in money supply and in short-term credits as key projections. The second is decomposition of the Monetary Sector account into the Central Bank Sector and the Other Banks Sector, which makes possible a projection of measures for the implementation of projected changes in short-term credits and money supply.Monthly planning has two objects: first, to check annual projections and, if necessary, to adjust them to actual developments; and second, to introduce seasonal components. Seasonal adjustment is made only for the Monetary Sector, its two subsectors, and credit policy measures. Monthly projections are made every month for three months in advance.

Notes: 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.

Notes: In my article I have taken up different expressions for the terms of trade in foreign trade, and especially I have been interested in a breakdown of total gain into two parts, namely the part due to the terms-of-trade effects and the part due to the price level effects. I have also taken up the inter-sectoral gain from terms of trade and the relation to the terms of trade in foreign trade. Besides the usual index for terms of trade-the ratio between output prices and input prices-I have also introduced another index for terms of trade corresponding to the relation between the output price index and an index consisting of a weighted average of input prices and prices for final demand. Finally I have tried to give some emperical findings which should throw light on the development of the Danish terms of trade for the period 1949 to 1964.

Notes: This article discusses the problem of compiling a balanced set of national accounts at constant prices. The method adopted is based on earlier work on this subject by Burge and Geary. Commodity flows, which are uniquely deflatable, are expressed at constant prices and savings in constant prices is obtained by preserving a balanced set of equations in real terms. The deflation of the external account is discussed.A method is suggested for expressing the national income account in real terms and an “income gain” is deduced for each industrial sector which represents the difference between real income and real product in that sector. The sum of the income gains for the domestic sectors is zero.The constituents of the income/expenditure accounts of households, corporations and general government are expressed at constant prices by selecting suitable deflators in a consistent manner. The accounts in real terms are now unbalanced and are balanced again by inserting a balancing item which is shown to represent a gain to the sector arising from changes in the terms of trade between the sectors. This item is called an “expenditure gain”. The sum of the expenditure gains for the institutional sectors is zero.The system suggested can be extended to cover additional items in the accounts and thus a complete set of national accounts in real terms can be derived.

Notes: The interrelation between changes in the economic structure, i.e., industrial distribution of income and labor force, and the size distribution of income is studied in this paper in a case study of India (1951–1960).The change in the size distribution of income is the sum of changes due to (1) inter-sectoral factors and (2) intra-sectoral factors. The need for this distinction is emphasized by the result obtained for India, that 85% of the changes in the size distribution may be assigned to inter-sectoral factors, and only 15% to intra-sectoral factors. Since the inter-sectoral factors are significantly influenced by changes in the industrial distribution of income and labor force, our result points out a relation between economic growth and the size distribution which quite often is overlooked in studies of the size distribution.The results obtained in this paper support several cross-section results of Professor Kuznets. In particular some of these are: (a) inter-sectoral inequality in the economic structure widened with economic growth, (b) the inequality in the size distribution of India widened, (c) the level of inequality in India is higher than in any of the eight developed countries considered.

Notes: The technique of national income accounting is a part of what Hicks has termed “The Fixprice Method”. Deflation is an attempt to approximate a real economy to a fixprice economy. It is shown that if the propositions of macro-dynamics are to hold, this deflation cannot be done in accordance with the price structure prevailing at any particular historical time, but must use that given by the capital theory of value, viz., when returns to labour are equal to zero. For a labour-abundant developing economy this will correspond to prices based on opportunity cost principles.As an illustration, sectoral incomes on this basis have been calculated for the industrial sector of the Indian economy for the years 1951 to 1965.

Notes: This report summarizes the proceedings of a series of meetings called by the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth of the National Bureau of Economic Research in June of 1966. The major conclusions of the conference, as transmitted to the Statistical Office of the United Nations, were as follows: (1) The aim of integrating the various parts of the system of national accounts, including input-output and financial transactions, is to be welcomed. (2) The more recently developed parts of the system need considerably more work to reach the same level of clarity and usefulness which the national income and product accounts have acquired. (3) Some simplification of the proposed basic system should be considered, involving the identification of a minimum of information that should and could be provided by all countries. (4) In line with the conference's overriding interest in national accounts as an instrument for economic analysis and a means of more informed policy formation, the proposed system needs considerable strengthening in the field of income distribution.

Notes: 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.

Notes: The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate the quarterly national income and product accounts of the United States (to be referred to henceforth as N.I.P.). The historical development of these accounts is reviewed first. Next, a summary of the statistical methodology underlying them is provided. An analysis of the errors to which they have been subject follows. An attempt is then made to define the area of their usefulness. Finally, suggestions for their improvement are formulated.The most general conclusions are as follows:〈list xml:id="l1" style="custom"〉1The quarterly N.I.P. estimates were developed in close response to an urgent need for them in economic analysis and policy formulation. Their development was a gradual process covering about two decades in which experience gained at one stage suggested improvements and extensions for the next.2The quarterly figures are based on abundant data sources. To be sure, the information is not as comprehensive as that available for the preparation of the annual estimates, but we are dealing only with differences in degree - there is no sharp contrast.3The series are subject to a considerable margin of error. There is bias in some of them - the initial estimates tend to be too low; and quite apart from bias they differ from the revised figures.4The margin of error attaching to the statistics disqualifies them from serving as precision instruments, but they are indispensable as a systematic framework for the order-of-magnitude analysis of the major forces determining the short-run movements of the economy. At present, the outstanding handicap in such analysis is not statistical error, but the inadequacy of economic theories and of our ability to test them.5The opportunities for mechanizing estimating techniques are assessed; the work on seasonals is discussed in this context; and a thorough investigation is proposed of the problems involved in the synchronization of the various components of the accounts. In addition, proposals for improving the data available for the estimation of specific income and product flows are formulated. Quarterly estimates of the physical volume of national output by industry, and quarterly accounts showing the financial transactions that mediate between saving and tangible investment are considered the two high-priority major extensions of the present accounts. Other, less basic, extensions of these accounts are also proposed.

Notes: This paper describes the process of development of the Fifth French Plan, and the role of the national income accounts in this process. Part I discusses methodological considerations relating to medium-term projections. Part II outlines the methods actually used in projecting growth outlines in the Fifth Plan, and discusses the considerations that proved critical. Part III discusses the applications of the projections to the planning apparatus.

Notes: The present system of national accounting (revised SNA and existing national systems) is a good framework for physical projections of goods and services produced by enterprises. It is less well suited to planning in value terms, because data on income are poor and the system is badly adapted to analysis at the level of decision-making centers of the relationships of production, prices, income, and investment; the picture which it gives of the non-market economy is inadequate; and it yields a static view of successive states of the economy, the last accented by the scarcity of structural information.The usefulness of the accounts for the formation of economic policy varies greatly according to the problems considered. Important for general aspects of economic policy in the relatively short term, they are limited in terms of fine decisions on public intervention in the market economy, and for the relatively detailed study of economic policy in the public sector itself. These shortcomings, although in part remediable, raise questions concerning the scope, object, flexibility, and spacial and temporal coverage of national accounting. Finally, the newly emerging needs of planning, especially those arising from the extension of the dialogue between social groups, the attempts at planning in value terms, and the increasing interest in the non-market economy, suggest a need for some deconsolidation of the system.To answer these demands, a more flexible system is needed. Such a system might comprise two stages. One, a statistical framework and presentation of data, would remain close to business and public accounting. The other, a more abstract and elaborate framework for macro-economic analysis, would correspond in large part to the present system. This system would include, around the central nucleus, a number of satellite accounts, consistent with the nucleus but articulated with it by very flexible and diverse rules. It could be extended to new fields where quantification without valuation is possible.

Notes: This paper discusses the problems that arise in the regional allocation of public sector accounts. These problems arise mainly in connection with the regional allocation of government expenditures on a governing rather than a procurement basis, and in the derivation of a meaningful surplus or deficit. The latter in turn requires an examination of the real geographic incidence of government revenues—to avoid, for instance, the assignment of the whole tobacco tax to Virginia and North Carolina. The use of a procurement basis for government product and the real geographic distribution of direct tax incidence for government revenue would produce a more complete and meaningful regional surplus or deficit measure, and gross regional products will not be as subject to spurious inter-regional variation.

Notes: The problem of national accounting “at constant prices” is in fact a problem of comparability of time series, as changes in the price structure preclude any direct comparison of economic flows. If such accounts are established they will make it possible directly to compare the same flow at two different times in the economy as a whole, and this without leaving the influence of other flows out of account. This makes it possible both to synthesize and to undertake analytical comparisons. The accounts could then be used for the study of time series, for projections or for structural studies (e.g. the mechanisms underlying the changing pattern of income distrubution).The first part of this report sets out to study the main problems of compiling accounts at constant prices and to examine what conventions should be adopted.The second part of the report considers how productivity gains can be explicitly shown in the national accounts. The proposed study plan restores the symmetry between price and productivity. As in the accounts at constant prices, gap variables are introduced to measure productivity gains. These variables can be interpreted in terms of surplus; the concept of surplus used here, however, is not the one adopted for the accounts in constant prices, but its dual. Setting up an accounting system “at constant productivity” therefore makes it possible to complete the information provided by an accounting system “at constant prices.”These two systems can of course be integrated: this leads to the introduction of the concept of an accounting system “at constant prices and constant productivity.” Such an accounting system makes it possible to show, in the same accounting framework, the respective contributions of price changes and improved productivity to the gains realised by the different economic agents. It therefore gives a complete picture of “transfers” between the agents. At the same time, the data on price and productivity can be integrated with each other.

Notes: In the course of preparing the Fifth French Plan, it seemed necessary to study the problem of equilibrium in capital markets in the future. For this purpose, a projection was made of the financial needs and resources of the different economic agents. The method employed was not entirely new: some attempts at projection for the medium term had already been made in the preparation of the Fourth Plan, and each year short term projections are made in connection with the different national economic budgets. However, the work on the Fifth Plan departs somewhat from what has been done before. With respect to the Fourth Plan, the methods have been improved, and greater thought has been given to integrating financial problems into the framework of the national accounts. With respect to the short term projections, the problems which must be faced are somewhat different. But more important than the differences are the characteristics which this method shares with all projections based on national accounting which are used in France. It is a part, in the first place, of a very general effort looking toward the integration of all economic forecasts into the same description of the future, taking account of the interdependence of different kinds of phenomena. In the second place, as is the case generally for the different elements of the accounting sketches used in the preparation of the plan, the object of the work is to expose the probable difficulties which will be met in the future. What is sought is essentially methods tending to point out problems, rather than means of preparing unconditional forecasts.In the presentation which follows of the method of medium term projection of financial flows, three parts will be distinguished. The work in question is part of a large structure of projections, and makes use of a formal scheme which is itself a part of the system of national accounts. It will therefore be convenient to make clear the framework in which the projection of financial flows is situated. In a second section, the method of projection used will be explained in general outline, and the last section will characterize the results obtained and present some reflections on the scope of the method.

Notes: With few exceptions, only cormmodity flows and values which can be determined by means of commodity flows (flows of goods and services) are calculated in constant prices in the official national accounts of the Federal Republic of Germany. Figures an the industrial origin and the final use of the national product are published, the former according to thirty industries, the latter according to the major types of uses of which in particular private consumption expenditure has been further analysed.The computations at constant prices are based on market prices and not on factor costs. It is only on this basis that a uniform valuation of the production and the expenditure side can be made since the turnover tax, which is the most important indirect tax, is contained in the elements of final demand in varying shares and cannot be eliminated (the tax is part of the price and has cumulative effect).The computation at constant prices presupposes a breakdown of the values in current prices according to quantities and prices. This raises a number of problems, e.g. because seller and buyer may consider differing aspects-production costs, technical attributes, etc., on the one hand, and use etc., on the other hand. In part there exist only vague ideas, or no ideas at all, as to what is to be considered-from a theoretical point of view-as quantity and price. In other cases the two values can only with great difficulties, if at all, be quantified, or there exists no market price and only the production costs are available. The author deals in greater detail with differences in quality and new commodities, the determination and treatment of quantities and prices for services, in particular for trade services (services attached to goods), the computation of government services at constant prices considering the development of productivity in public service, the determination of the values calculated as balances, above all the treatment of changes in the terms of trade for net exports of goods and services, the computation of the contributions of industries to the gross domestic product and, finally, the reconciliation of the production and the expenditure side.In a third section the author deals with index formulae and the base year. In the majority of cases values are deflated; partly, however, they are currently adjusted by means of volume and quantity data. On the production side the two methods are in part combined.In a concluding section a survey is provided of the computation methods used in the Federal Republic of Germany and on the available material for the computations. Mention is made of depreciation at constant prices.

Notes: A quarterly macro-econometric model of Japan's postwar economy has been constructed for the period 1954–1965 FY on the basis of standardized quarterly national income accounts. The model is designed for facilitating short-term economic forecasting and formulating adequate fiscal and monetary policy. Longer-term factors such as labor mobility, technical progress, etc., were also considered in the model.The model consists of fifty-three equations related to most of the macroeconomic variables in both money and real terms, and the equations were estimated in principle by the limited information maximum likelihood method. Principal exogenous variables related to policy instruments are government expenditures including transfers, parameters of tax functions, interest rate, and prices and fares controlled by the government, etc. In formulating the model, non-linear specifications were used whenever found necessary.Results of our testing on its predictive capability indicated fairly satisfactory performances for our observation period and also for 1966 FY. Multipliers related to fiscal and monetary policy were also obtained, indicating the dynamic characteristics of the Japanese economy, in particular, represented by dynamic business fixed investment, as compared with corresponding multipliers of the U.S. models.Although the model is exploratory and to serve as a core for a more disaggregated “Master Model,” the usefulness of the model for our purposes and the workability of our quarterly national accounts data for model-building have been recognized. The quarterly data, however, still remain to be improved especially in regard to consistency between income and expenditure and integration with flow-of-funds accounts.

Notes: The measurement and inter-spatial comparison of Latin American real income levels calls for techniques which depart substantially from the conventional procedure of applying such official or free market exchange rates as happen to prevail in any given period. The reasons are varied, the main ones being that in an area such as Latin America prices are notoriously volatile, their structure differs radically from that encountered in other parts of the world, and the exchange rate system is characterized by frequent and usually irregular revisions, while in certain countries a multiple exchange rate system applies and no single factor is available for conversion purposes. In addition, there exists the problem common to all developing countries that the rates to a large extent reflect the exchange value of a limited number of export commodities vis-à-vis a wide range of imported goods and in no way typify the internal-external price relationship for the bulk of production which by its nature fails to enter into international trading transactions.The author has endeavoured to circumvent these difficulties by adopting the often-discussed “purchasing power parity” approach whereby national accounts data are converted into a common monetary denominator (in this case, the U.S. dollar) expressed in “real” or quantitative terms which as far as possible eliminate inter-spatial price differences. Results are presented and analyzed, first for the base year 1960, and then for the period 1955–1964 at the level of main expenditure sectors as well as for the total gross domestic product.To the extent that available statistics permitted, results for Latin American countries are also related to the United States and certain countries in Western Europe, a main objective being to determine the approximate dimension of the incomes “gap” and to ascertain whether this is increasing, decreasing or remaining very much unchanged in size.

Notes: The main purpose of the study is to determine the savings potential of urban and rural households in India and in the process determine the possible savings and consumption functions separately for urban and rural areas.Four different possible functions have been used for determining the savings behaviour of the households both at the aggregate level and at the per capita level. The rural households, according to the results, have an extremely low rate of saving with income elasticity of saving of less than unity. For the urban households on the other hand, the income elasticity of saving is high enough to suggest the possibilities of considerably high savings potential.To understand the consumption behaviour of these households, the long-run and the short-run marginal propensities to consume and the marginal propensities to consume out of‘permanent’ or ‘normal’ income and ‘transitory’ income have been worked out. For the urban sector none of these give encouraging enough results and the analysis has been extended to examine whether other factors like prices and household assets are of any significance. Whereas for the rural sector, Milton Friedman's theory of ‘permanent’ or ‘normal’ income is somewhat substantiated, other factors like ‘transitory’ income, prices and assets appear to inthence urban consumption behaviour though no single one of them substantially enough. A negligible effect of ‘permanent’ income on urban consumption behaviour is, on the other hand, very clearly suggested by the results.Household consumption and savings have next been projected using the above results to determine the possible levels for the next three years. The results suggest that the rate of domestic savings likely to be achieved by the end of the Third Five Year Plan (1965–66) falls short of the targets laid down.

Notes: Economists' use of the term “equality” in reference to a distribution of incomes has historically been in the sense of a consensus for some statistical characteristic(s) of the distribution rather than a firm concept of equality. Of course such a concept rests on appropriate welfare assumptions about income and its distribution, assumptions which, for the most part, have been left implicit (and unknown) in discussions of income equality in the literature.Our purpose in this paper is dual: first, we wish to discover an unambiguous, welfare-related equality measure. This we accomplish through suitable assumptions on a social welfare function. What is produced is an “index” of equality which describes the performance of a given distribution relative to the maximum welfare derivable from the total income it represents. The measure thus depends functionally on the welfare attributes of income, something which in reality we know little about.This impasse leads us to inquire into the sensitivity of the index over specifications of the welfare function, which is done by comparing equality ranks for the states of the United States for 1960 under various functional forms and among curves within a given form. As an interesting secondary issue, the performance of traditional equality measures is tested relative to the welfare-oriented index to discover implications about their welfare content.It is found that the equality index is, in certain ranges for the welfare function, insensitive to its specification. The findings lead directly to conclusions concerning traditional equality measures, their usefulness in correctly accounting for equality differences among alternative income distributions and, concomitantly, their implicit welfare inputs.

Notes: 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.

Notes: Cet article résume brièvement les méthodes utilisées par le Service de la statistíque yougoslave dans le calcul du revenu national aux prix constants. En ce qui concerne l'industrie, la méthode utilisée consiste à multiplier le revenu net par unité dans l'annCe de base (distribué par type) par les quantités produites dans l'année en cours. Cet article discute également des autres méthodes possibles, et fait ressortir les raisons qui se trouvent à la base des choix effectués.La partie finale examine la validité des mesures obtenues; elle met en garde contre la tentation de procéder a des interprétations de caractére normatif sur la base de prix déterminés par voie administrative ou sujets a d'autres types de distortions. Des données, classées par industrie et par région, sont fournies pour la periode 1952–1965.

Notes: 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.

Notes: 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.

Notes: This paper presents the results of an investigation of the distribution of Yugoslavia's national income by social classes in 1938. The population in mid-1938 was apportioned among social classes as follows: proletariat 34.6 per cent, middle classes 59.2 per cent, bourgeoisie 5.3 per cent, 0.9 per cent unallocated. About three-quarters of the population was rural. The proletariat amounted to 5.2 million persons, of which 3 million were peasants living on dwarf holdings and 2.2 million were rural and urban wage earners. Unemployment in the non-agricultural sector was 10 per cent; if the agricultural sector is added, overall un- and under-employment amounted to 31 per cent. The bourgeoisie consisted of 0.8 million persons, of which two-fifths were rich peasants. Of the 9 million persons in the middle classes, 7 million were peasants with small and medium holdings. The remainder were mainly minor entrepreneurs in the non-agricultural sector. The proletariat accounted for 35 per cent of total population but only 18 per cent of aggregate income, whereas the bourgeoisie with 5 per cent of the population received 26 per cent of aggregate income. The distribution of income among the various groups of the non-agricultural population was more unequal than among the groups of the agricultural population. Estimates are preesented of the distribution of income by various types and sources, for agricultural and non-agricultural population, together with income per capita, average earnings per employed worker, labor productivity, and capital intensity, the last by industrial branches as well as social classes.

Notes: Developments in economic theory have in many ways enhanced the opportunity for using financial accounts data in monetary analysis. This is true in such areas as the role of assets, the development of portfolio choice theory, the demand for money, and the behavior of intermediaries. At the same time, theory has increasingly emphasized behavioral relationships. These developments give rise to new data needs. An inquiry was addressed to some 25 specialists, whose responses illustrate these needs. Some of the desired data are “more of the same,” such as more sectoring, more detail on financial instruments, data on stocks as well as flows. Some data needs, reflecting behavioral theorizing, point beyond traditional financial accounts data and call for maturity distributions, interest rates, rates of return on equities and real assets, and the parameters of their frequency distributions. The degree of economic development and the degree of openness are found to be important determinants of the kind of data to be sought and employed in particular countries.Public policy is finding increasing use for financial accounts data in coordinating the flow of financial resources with the planning of physical investment. Nevertheless, many policy purposes call for more detailed data than can be provided by an integrated system. This has led to a selective use of data sources outside the financial accounts. Builders of financial models, likewise, have found it preferable to work with more flexible data selected ad hoc than with integrated financial accounts. Hope of applying the techniques of modern model building to financial accounts data, such as econometric estimation of a flow of funds table, or its conversion into an input-output matrix, seems tenuous for the time being. Thus, financial accountants, competing with financial model builders for the attention of theorists and policy makers, must broaden the scope of their data in the hope that there is room for the growth of both disciplines.

Notes: In a number of underdeveloped countries today, adequate statistics for estimating national output by traditional national accounting methods are unavailable or unreliable. However, many of these same countries do publish data on monetary variables at an early stage in their development. These data can now be used to estimate national income.In this study the money supply was defined to include all currency in circulation, private deposits subject to check at all banks and postal systems, all government deposits, and unused overdrafts less float. The national accounts data were taken from United Nations sources and data supplied by various foreign statistical offices. To make the accounts more comparable in terms of coverage and to limit reported income to the monetized sector of the economy, non-monetary imputations were deleted.The monetary and national accounts data were combined in a multiple, stepwise regression. National income was used as the dependent variable and money supply and other data were used as the independent variables. The final estimating equations explained about 96 per cent of the variation in income between countries. Other tests were conducted using the currency ratio, transactions velocity, population, and per capita consumption. However, these variables did not augment the explanatory power of the regression equations.When the equations were used to estimate national income for twenty-two under-developed countries, the derived estimates showed a high degree of concordance with reported income where it existed for comparative purposes. The results indicate that monetary data can be used to estimate national income for underdeveloped countries with a relatively high degree of accuracy, between countries, and from year to year within a country.

Notes: In The Present Paper The Author Reviews The Results Of An Investigation Aimed At Estimating The relative level of stocks in Hungary in terms of international comparisons. Though international comparison was limited by scarcity of data, it has still become evident that stocks as a whole, compared to production and sales, seem to be unnecessarily high. The investigation has been carried out in relation both to the level of stocks and their rate of increase.The global volume and building of stocks, however, did not give a satisfactory explanation, and the investigation had to be extended to the individual groups of stocks separately. In order to facilitate the comparison, stocks were classified into the following groups: agricultural stocks, goods in process, industrial finished goods and manufactures held by users, and retail stocks. The classification was based on the different function of the individual groups. This classification of stocks could be compared only with the data of the U.S A.The international comparison revealed that both the volume and the rate of increase of stocks in Hungary is unreasonably high. They are high even if we consider that the growth rate of the economy in Hungary was greater than in any of the countries examined.The author refers to the fact that the stock problem was one of the starting issues in the economic research process which led to the reform of the Hungarian economic management system introduced on 1st January 1968.

Notes: The national income and product account (United Nations concept) in current prices itemized by distributive shares and by type of expenditure is given for the period 1929–1937. The national income by industrial origin and the reproducible national wealth are computed for the year 1930. Differences between the U.N. and the material concept are explained by means of the 1939 data.The national product series in real terms are computed (a) by means of the price deflation of the types of expenditure, and (b) as the physical output of goods and services by industrial origin (since 1926). Major changes In distributive shares are explained with the help of Price-cost analysis.The national product in real terms attains the lowest point in 1935 and not in 1933, as the industrial production and foreign trade series indicate. The structure of gross national expenditure reveals the same pattern of shifts, as is well known from other industrially developed countries during the business cycle.The development of national product by industrial origin, however, reveals some conspicuous singularities. Especially the uninterrupted increase in trade services (in terms of both persons engaged and turnover in constant prices) is an anomaly in the period of 1929–1937.Further, the Increase of rent (due to the gradual abolition of rent control), contrasting with the general fall of prices, led to a major shift in the distribution of national income during the early thirties. The other remarkable change resulting mainly from the changing price structure was the decrease of the farmers' share in national income.The production, transportation and distribution series in real terms reveal some time-lags. These result partly from the shift from the foreign to the home market, partly from the compensatory effects of stock movements, and partly from the delayed adjustment of consumers to declining income.

Notes: This paper presents a new annual series for United Kingdom gross national product, at current and constant prices, calculated from the expenditure side. These results differ significantly from previous estimates in that they go back to the beginning of the railway age on an annual basis and also in that the constant price estimates involve a detailed deflation of the main components of expenditure on consumption and capital formation. The implications of the new results are summarised, with particular reference to rates of growth and relative price changes, and an appendix describes the sources of the estimates.

Notes: Study of relationships between outputs, inputs, prices, and final demands in the United States can be strengthened by: (1) eliminating disparities in official measures of output (mainly the Index of Industrial Production and Real Gross National Product), and (2) obtaining agreement on the conceptual framework for studying these relationships.Real Gross Product has provided a consistent framework for study of productivity and prices for the total economy and for broad industry groups, but has not easily permitted the analysis of commodity detail particularly for intermediate commodities. Industrial Production, on the other hand, has considerably extended the detailed analysis of commodity output but has not provided a basis for systematic analysis of productivity and prices within a consistent framework for the total economy.This paper illustrates the effect of some of the disparities between Industrial Production and Gross Product in manufacturing on the analysis of relations between prices and output and prices and productivity. This is done for the 1954–1958 period when benchmark data are available for both measures. Inconsistencies for a number of industries cause difficulties in analyzing the interplay of demand and cost influences on price changes; for example, industries which rise above average in output and below in price in one measure are not the same as those in similar price-quantity relationships in the other measure.The paper concludes by recommending improvements in data and concept in order to eliminate some of the disparities and to enable analysts to reap the benefits of both types of measures of real output.

Notes: Because of the recent public concern over the brain drain, this study attempts to measure the U.S. gain of highly skilled manpower. The paper discusses the serious short-comings of the data on gross immigration of scientists and engineers provided by the U.S. immigration authorities as a measure of true U.S. gains. In a case study of Swedish scientists and engineers it was found, for example, that whereas the U.S. data showed a gain of 106 Swedish scientists and engineers over a number of years, the net figure was only 26 after adjustment for remigration and the application of the proper OECD education criteria.The paper then reports the findings of a statistical study which uses the stock data on U.S. scientists in the National Register of Scientific and Technical Personnel to estimate the number of foreign born in this stock and analyse their characteristics with respect to age, educational attainment, and employment preferences.It was found that nearly 7 percent of all U.S. scientists are of foreign origin (foreign born and foreign secondary education), whereas 11.5 percent of all scientists with a Ph.D. are of foreign origin. The percentage among Ph.D. holders is highest in meteorology (22.3), followed by linguistics (18.7), physics (17.1) and statistics (14.6).The greatest percentage of scientists comes from Canada (10.4 per thousand), followed by Germany (8.3 per thousand) and the United Kingdom (6.7 per thousand). However, after adjustment of these data for the different sizes of the total foreign born population from each country in the U.S., it turns out that by this measure the greatest shares of scientists are supplied by the Japanese, followed by the Austrian-Swiss, Benelux and Canadians.The analysis of the age composition of all foreign born reveals that in the age groups that were 20–29, 45–54, and 65 and over in 1964 foreigners represent a smaller than average share, probably reflecting war casualties and education completed at a later age. Germans and Austrians are heavily concentrated in the group 55–64 years old in 1964, suggesting that a great share of scientists from these countries may have been victims of a brain push.

Notes: One of the most characteristic features of Japan's public sector is the predominant role of the Treasury system, which operates not only budgetary funds of the central government but also various other funds such as Postal Savings Funds and surplus funds of public corporations.Among the general account and 45 special accounts of the Treasury system, the Foodstuff Control, the Foreign Exchange Fund and the Trust Fund play important roles, both through their intra-governmental transactions and through their transactions with private sectors. Particularly noticeable is the role played by the Trust Fund Bureau, which serves as a financial institution for government agencies. Surplus and accumulated funds in the Postal Savings and other special accounts of the Government are deposited in the Trust Fund Bureau, which employs these funds for intra-governmental ways and means loans, and for government loans and investment programs.Another feature of Japan's Treasury system is that it deposits all the Treasury funds solely with the Bank of Japan.The activities of local authorities and local public enterprises are also largely financed by Treasury funds, and are intertwined with the Treasury system.The statistical systems for monetary and financial flow analysis developed by the Bank of Japan, therefore, place stress on the analysis of flows of Treasury funds, and are based on an institutional sectoring to reflect the flows of funds as they actually take place. One exception is the Monetary Survey compiled in accordance with the IMF formula, which adopts a kind of functional sectoring for international comparison purposes.In the last three years, Japan's public sector, which had long stood rather neutral in the financial patterns of the economy, has begun to show an increasing financial deficit. With the increasing financial deficit of the sector, the financial patterns of the nation as a whole are undergoing remarkable changes.

Notes: South Korea began its measurement of Gross National Product during the turbulent 1950's, a period of postwar rebuilding and of political and social changes. With only a small and largely inexperienced staff, and with little support from other statistical agencies whose data were essential to adequate GNP measurement, the Bank of Korea began this task in the early 1950's. Early estimates were extremely rough; over the years, the statistical staff was trained and other statistical agencies were upgraded. Measurements of output in the large agricultural sector and in manufacturing have gradually but consistently been strengthened as recent input-output data has been developed. Gaps still persist, particularly in the wholesale and retail sectors, but certain strengths are present: an outstanding job has been done in product pricing. The author describes the evolution of Korea's improving GNP program, presents its sources of data and its methodologies, and gives an assessment of problems of the past and prospects for the future.

Notes: This paper is concerned with the sensitivity of estimates of the aggregate capital stock of the United States to the statistician's choice of depreciation method. The usual depreciation charge can be shown to include allowances both for physical deterioration and for obsolescence. If one interprets the gross stock as the stock of surviving assets, then the various net stocks defined by depreciation accounting may be interpreted as a revaluation of these assets by means of an index of embodied technical change. Estimates of the United States capital stock were generated under eight sets of assumptions. These estimates are compared with respect to level, trend, and implications for other aggregate statistical indicators. The conclusion is reached that the assumptions which define a country's stock of tangible capital are of considerably greater importance than has often been supposed.

Notes: The contention in this paper is that the present method of treating interest and net rents as transfers rather than as payments for services provided creates problems in the measurement of production by industry and that the difficulties encountered in explaining the treatment of interest items in the different tables of the National Accounts are even more apparent when one views the National Accounts framework as an integrated reflection of economic reality.It is argued that the lending of money arises from the stretching out of the production and consumption process, and the interest charges constitute a charge for the administrative services and risk involved. This is somewhat analagous to the charges for hiring out real goods and services. A similar case is made for the treatment of rents with the exception of imputed net rent where it is contended that economic risk is incurred only when production is undertaken for sale and that there should be no entrepreneurial return where the production is for the use of the owner-producer.It is suggested that an alternative treatment of interest and rents as payments for services is more realistic. Its adoption in the National Accounts would eliminate the need for imputations now made to account for the production of financial intermediaries, as well as the unconvincing explanations put forward for the present treatment of interest on consumer and public debt. Finally, it would serve to integrate the production accounts with the financial flows and the related financial structure.

Notes: 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.

Notes: This review article initially summarizes some of the highlights of the volume Why Growth Rates Differ, including the use of income shares as weights for the various factor inputs and some of the major factual conclusions drawn from the inter-country comparisons. Some of the main factors in differences in income levels and differences in growth rates are then reviewed.In appraising the contribution of the volume, the monumental task is emphasized. This study illustrates the adaptability of the approach which Denison developed initially in The Sources of Economic Growth. The volume meets many of the questions and criticisms raised of his earlier study, and should encourage a shift of the discussion from methodology towards the substance of the empirical results.The volume introduces some shifts in emphasis on the importance of different factors in growth. The role of demand variations and the contribution of capital is considered, but the evidence in the volume gives less emphasis on the importance of these factors than earlier work by others in both the United States and Europe. The volume gives some emphasis to shifts out of agriculture and the self-employed in the high postwar growth in many individual European countries. It considers the effects of reductions in trade barriers, and follows the view of most economists in playing this down. Advances in knowledge are also considered.Those who are interested in questions of economic growth, past and future, and economic policy in this area will find much in this volume for study and reflection.

Notes: This paper is a part of a larger study of economic growth in Canada, following the methods developed by Edward Denison in his book The Sources of Economic Growth in the United States and the publication Why Growth Rates Differ. The new material in this paper relates to Canada and the Canadian/U.S. comparison, while the material on Northwest Europe is drawn from the Brookings study.The present paper sets out the results to date on the differences in real output per employed person between Canada and the United States for one year, 1960. At this stage in our research the results indicate that the level of real output per employed person in Canada was about 20 per cent lower than in the United States in that year. On the basis of historical output data, it would appear that this margin of difference in Canadian/U.S. product levels has persisted throughout the present century.The central part of this paper examines the significance of differences in factor inputs in Canada and the United States and their contribution to the difference in income. The level of inputs per employed person in Canada accounts for only about 2 percentage points of the income difference between Canada and the United States. These results indicate that the overwhelming part of the difference in output per employed person between the two countries reflects the differences in output in relation to total factor inputs, rather than the magnitude of other factor inputs used in combination with labour.This result is consistent with earlier studies by Denison and others which have indicated the crucial importance of output in relation to total factor inputs, both in output growth over time and intercountry comparisons of output level.The body of the paper can give only brief attention to the numerous conceptual and statistical questions that arise in such a wide-ranging study, and the authors do not pretend to have tackled, let alone resolved, all of the wide range of problems related to this study. Nor do they claim any high degree of precision for the results, especially in the light of the statistical limitations of the basic data.

Notes: Dudley Seers and his colleagues in working with various less developed economies have proposed a modified version of an input-output table for making projections and tests of consistency in planning. The table includes only the important inter-sectoral flows. By making a simplifying assumption with regard to the non-included inter-sectoral flows, an algebraic formulation of the modified input-output table is possible. The resulting matrix of input-output coefficients and final demands can be transformed into a Leontief input-output matrix which is block triangular and composed of two-blocks, one of which is diagonal. Given a set of final demands it is very easy to solve for the total output of each of the sectors. The amount of computation involved is directly related to the number of intersectoral flows included in the original modified input-output table.

Notes: Capital requirements may be expressed in various ways but when comparisons are to be made between situations of great variety it is best to express them per unit of annual product. The definition of product also raises difficulties. Here it is measured net of agricultural inputs but still gross of industrial inputs. The study approaches the problem by first considering the capital requirements of the simplest types of agriculture and then moving up the scale towards the more advanced. Simple forms of crop culture using hand tools may require only 0.1 to 0.2 of a year's product in the form of capital. These requirements increase when livestock are added, either for draught power or for their products. Increases also occur when tree and bush crops are introduced. In the less favourable climates, capital is also needed for the provision of shelter. When comparisons are possible between farms of different sizes, the greater capital requirements per unit of product for the smaller farms are clearly to be seen. In general the amount of capital per unit of product in agriculture is tending to fall, both through improvements in techniques and through an increase in the average size of holding.

Notes: The purpose of the paper is to describe current and constant price estimates of Japanese central and local government postwar domestic expenditures by economic type and function recently completed by Miss Yoshiko Kido, International Christian University, Tokyo, and myself. The rationale of the functional classification is to estimate those government expenditures which enhance the economy's productive capacity.Expenditures are divided into four broad functional categories: developmental, disaster repair and prevention, social welfare, and general government. These four categories are subdivided to two levels of disaggregation. We were able to break down government fixed investment, government enterprise inventory investment, current domestic transfers and subsidies into 42 functional components. For constant price series, each functional component by economic type was deflated by separate price indexes. We followed the Economic Planning Agency's procedure for the official national accounts of assuming no productivity change in the provision of government services.Our results are generally comparable to the official national accounts estimates. The major difference is that we attribute considerably more fixed investment to local governments, and correspondingly less to the central level.Government expenditures had the following characteristics. Growth was rapid; in real terms the public sector use of the economy's resources in 1963 was 2.2 times more than in 1952. The elasticity of government expenditures to GNP was unity in current prices, slightly less in real terms. The government postwar share in GNP has been smaller than in European nations and, unlike them, was not rising. This reflects the underlying growth strategy of emphasis upon private business fixed investment. Government consumption expenditures declined relative to GNP, and investment rose.Developmental expenditures comprised the largest share (40–45 per cent) of the government total. The elasticities to GNP of government expenditures by economic and functional categories are provided and discussed.A simple test was made of the cyclical relationship of government expenditures (both total and by category) to GNP. The results suggest that government expenditures, rather than contra-cyclical, were pro-cyclical in effect.

Notes: Economic planning can in principle be seen as consisting of two phases: first a description of all possible development paths, and second a choice of “the best one” from among these possibilities. In the present paper the measurement of real capital is discussed in relation to the needs of the first of these two phases. In section 2 of the paper it is argued that the most relevant measure of capital for this purpose is the gross value of the existing capital stock, i.e. the total value without accounting for depreciation. In section 3 of the paper different ways of estimating this gross capital stock are discussed. In sections 4, 5 and 6 there follows a discussion of how one can correct the capital measures for changes in efficiency with age, for “embodied technical progress” and for different durabilities. The latter correction leads to concepts which are equivalent to measuring “capital services” as a factor of production. The treatment of maintenance and repair will be important for the interpretations of some of these “corrections.” The final section of the paper suggests a model which requires data on vintages of capital.

Notes: 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.

Notes: This study assesses the relationship of education and economic growth, economic development and economic progress in aggregate, in structural and in micro-economic terms on the basis of one hundred years of Canadian experience. Education is considered as a factor of input. The contribution made by knowledge resulting from additional education expands the capacity to produce, and increases the demand for goods and services and the desire for greater leisure. The dual function of education is stressed: the demand and supply effect. Education is examined both as a cause and a consequence of economic growth, economic development and economic progress, through its contribution to the quality of the labour force, earning capacity, both individual and national, productivity, the rate of economic growth and the character of economic development.The Canadian experience suggests that educational progress generally occurred in line with economic development during the first eight decades, with the real take-off in educational advancement only occurring in the last two decades, when the nation reached the stage of technological maturity and high mass-consumption. Among the reasons for the lower ratio of gross national product devoted to education in the first eight decades were the low priority attached to education, the emphasis on investment in physical capital because of its shorter pay-off period than investment in human capital, and the heavy reliance on a substantial flow of immigrants who had obtained their education and training abroad. A distinct change occurred, however, in the last two decades, partly as a result of new technological challenges and partly as the result of changes in private and public attitudes, as the recognition of the rewards of education in terms of individual advancement and social progress led to a greater willingness to devote an increasing proportion of the nation's resources to investment in human capital, long pay-off periods notwithstanding.

Notes: Human capital concepts and measures have been applied and misapplied to an increasing variety of economic problem areas, two of which are examined.One of these is measurement of human capital gains and losses through migration. First requirements here are specification of the gaining or losing entities and of the relevant welfare functions. Alternatives in these respects are outlined. It is then argued that an appropriately adapted Fisherian present-value assessment of human capital is normally the correct measure. Replacement costs are a legitimate substitute only for young migrants with little cumulated learning through experience and even then they have usually been fallaciously applied. Probability adjustments for migration and re-migration are required in both cost and present-value assessments of human capital effects of migration-relevant policy alternatives, but the nature of those adjustments differs with the measurement approach used.For longitudinal analysis of contributions of human capital to economic growth, all measures of human capital stocks are inappropriate. A first principle of such analysis is measurement of resource inputs as flows. A coordinate principle requires that disaggregation be carried as far as necessary to distinguish essentially homogeneous categories of labor inputs. Though a way of separating out the schooling versus on-the-job-experience components of human capital is illustrated, it requires some strong assumptions. Splitting men into abstracted human capital components is better avoided in growth analysis. Furthermore, categorization of labor-force sub-groups could equally well provide the basis for rate-of-return assessments of marginal changes in the pace of investments in humans. Such assessments would incorporate the main elements of capital theory except valuation of the capital asset itself.Ultimately, human resource measurements for use in major public policy decisions relating to either growth or migration (or both) must incorporate modifications or error components that allow for development phenomena that elude marginal assessments. Among developing countries especially, a consideration of educational diffusion processes and dynamic productivity scale effects, for example, could have critical measurement and policy implications.

Notes: This article discusses the revival of interest in research on cyclical behavior in the socialist countries, and the resulting shifting requirements placed upon the national income accounts. The first section discusses the economic experience and the institutional factors leading to this shift in emphasis. The second section deals with the use of national accounts in cyclical analysis, with particular reference to the Czechoslovak experience. The third section extends the discussion to the use of national accounts data for economic forecasting. The final section discusses the theory of economic fluctuations under socialism, and compares it with cyclical behavior in capitalist economies.

Notes: The system of social accounts described in this article is based on the following five principles:(1) Producers of goods and services are working organizations which represent groups of people or individuals organized for the purpose of earning a living by producing goods and services that satisfy individual or collective needs. Business, government, profit and nonprofit, corporate and unincorporated working organizations are treated in a uniform way.(2) Since the behaviors of the market and non-market sectors differ considerably, these two sectors are consistently separated throughout the accounting system.(3) There are four basic activities: (a) production, (b) consumption, (c) investment, and (d) income redistribution. These call for four separate accounts: (a) Working Organizations, (b) Households, (c) Community, including government and certain non-government institutions, and (d) Accumulation. The fifth account, Rest of the World, serves for balancing purposes.(4) The same classifications of transactions are used for activities and institutions, making possible complete matching of social product and financial flows accounts.(5) The system strives to achieve the maximum analytical flexibility. Some of its possibilities are visible from the classification of industries: A. Market (Material) Sector: 1. Agriculture, II. Forestry, III. Mining and Manufacturing, IV. Construction, V. Transportation, VI. Trade and Catering, VII. Handicrafts; B. Non-Market (Non-Material) Sector: VIII. Housing and Communal Economy, IX. Education, Culture, and Social Welfare, X. Public Services Social Organizations (Political, Religious, etc.), Finance and Insurance, Public Administration and Judiciary, National Defence. Sector A corresponds to the material definition of social product. Sectors A + B correspond to the SNA definition. Sectors A + B minus Industry × reflects the welfare definition. Further, Industries I-IV produce goods, V-VII market services, VIII and IX non-market services with welfare content, X intermediate nonmarket services, V-X all services.

Notes: The paper is concerned with non-monetized transactions which are dimensionally important in developing countries. The notion of degree of monetization attaches to all real flows. It is necessary to analyze non-monetized transactions in order to a have a better understanding of the producing and consuming activities of households which contribute a large part of national product in less developed countries. Among different non-monetized flows, particular attention is paid to the use of the output of own production for different purposes. A survey of Indian information on the degree of non-monetization shows that it is different for different flows: highest for consumption, intermediate for current inputs and lowest for investments. Cross section Indian data indicate that the degree of non-monetization is expected to fall with the improvement in the average household expenditure and urbanisation but it may rise if development occurs largely through agricultural improvement. Some of the Indian findings may apply to other developing countries as well. Normally, estimates of expenditure elasticities based on cross section data are obtained from consumption expenditure on a particular item (e) and the aggregate consumption expenditure (E) without going into the question of the degree of non-monetization of either element. Since traditional models of consumer behaviour apply only to the relation between money expenditure on a particular item (em) and the aggregate money expenditure (Em), it is suggested that the relation between e and E should be broken down into relations between (i) em and Em, (ii) ek and Ek where these are the corresponding kind elements and (iii)among E, Em and Ek. Some estimates of elasticity based on this scheme are presented indicating that the procedure is reasonable and suggesting that this type of analysis would probably furnish a suitable framework for answering relevant questions in the field.

Notes: 1. The problems presented have arisen in practice when carrying out international comparisons of national income and its elements between the CMEA countries. Some rough conclusions are drawn from the nearly completed comparison of consumption level between Poland and Austria.2. The basic methodological principles of the comparison were similar to the methods used by the group of economists directed by Milton Gilbert and Irving Kravis in their comparison relating to Western European countries. However, a number of new problems have emerged in the course of our work which required practical and theoretical solutions.Some differences in theoretical approach between the Gilbert-Kravis study and ours are discussed. Gilbert and Kravis based their comparison as far as possible on average prices of commodity groups or quantity data, and price indexes for representative goods were applied only as a practical necessity. On the contrary in our study we based our calculation mainly on representative goods and their price relation as this method, in our opinion, takes into account quality differences, which escape from the picture in the Gilbert-Kravis method.3. Some special theoretical and practical problems of comparisons between countries having market economies and those with planned economies are presented in terms of the example of the comparison of consumption levels between Austria and Poland.Three groups of questions are pointed out: (1) the problem of the definition and boundaries of the aggregates compared; (2) the problem of differences in pricing in the groups of products and services compared, resulting from the social policy of the government concerned; and (3) the problem of differences arising from general price policies in the countries compared.4. At the end of the paper it is suggested that it would be useful to work out a “statistical information system”, which would make possible detailed comparisons of the volume of consumption among several countries and groups of countries without the need of conducting direct comparisons between each pair of countries.

Notes: (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.

Notes: 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.

Notes: 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.