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This paper is the concluding part of a project described in an earlier paper in this journal. The conceptual partition of government services into intermediate, individual and collective consumption is connected to the framework of the SNA and ESA. The paper shows how elements from both systems can be welded together in order to describe government productive activity more clearly within the general make-use matrix approach. After an attempt to clarify some of the existing terminology, figures are presented which show that the partition is feasible, in principle. The data also support the necessity of distinguishing between individual and collective consumption of government services leading to the concept of total individual consumption. Finally, the paper concludes that intermediate use, if properly defined, should be introduced as a subcategory of government consumption, but not subtracted at present from GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Human Development Index (HDI) uses GDP per capita to measure“command over resources,” whichimplicitlymakes the strong value judgment that inequality and insecurity do not matter. This paper presents revised estimates of the Index of Economic Well-Being (IEWB) for the United States, the U.K., Canada, Australia, Germany, Norway and Sweden for the period 1980 to 2001 and demonstrates that replacing an index of the log per capita incomes with our IEWB as the“command over resources” component in the Human Development Index (HDI) affects the level and trend of the HDI, even among affluent nations. Because the IEWB recognizes four dimensions of command over resources (Current effective per capita Consumption flows, Net societal Accumulation of stocks of productive resources, Income Distribution and Economic Security), its use has a particularly large impact where underlying trends in these components diverge (e.g. the U.K. or the United States). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using changes in the possession of household assets over the past 20 years, several recent papers have argued that economic growth and poverty reduction in Africa was substantially better than suggested by national income data and income poverty statistics, which suffer from well-known weaknesses. We scrutinize these claims and first argue that trends in assets provide biased proxies for trends in incomes or consumption. In particular we show that the relationship between growth in assets and growth in incomes or consumption is extremely weak; instead, we find evidence of asset drift using macro and micro data, which is consistent with the claims we make about possible biases in the use of asset indices. As a result, we find no evidence supporting the claim of an African growth miracle that extends beyond what has been reported in official GDP/capita and consumption figures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the agenda of 'beyond GDP' encompasses measurements that lie outside boundaries of the System of National Accounts, key aspects of individual well-being and social welfare can be incorporated into an SNA framework. We bring together the relevant theoretical literature and the empirical tools needed for this purpose. We show how consumption-based measures of economic welfare can be integrated into the national accounts without changing their production or asset boundary. At the same time, explicit normative and methodological choices are required to select a social welfare function. The paper provides guidance how to make these choices transparent and how to present social welfare measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarises the results of a new comparison of the level of Australian and U.K. real product in the 1890s, obtained by the direct deflation of money values of GDP by relative prices. The object of the study was to provide a check on the existing comparisons, obtained by extrapolation of time series of real GDP, as shown, for example, in Maddison (1982). Existing estimates imply that in the 1890s Australian GDP per capita was about 50 percent higher in the U.K. and U.S.A. and more than twice that for the average of 12 other western countries. The present study suggests these results probably overstate Australia's real GDP, and that Australian real GDP per capita was 36 percent higher than the U.K.'s in 1891 and 3 percent higher in 1900. Personal consumption per capita was 15 percent higher in Australia than in the U.K. in 1891, but about the same level in 1900. Although this study compares prices and GDP in the colony of New South Wales with those in the U.K., the colony may be token as representative of Australia as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For large economies with substantial regional variation, it is of great importance for policymakers and economic analysis that macro-economic statistics are broken down by region. This paper reviews the regional accounts in India, discusses their role in Indian federal and state policies, and provides new estimates to cover major data gaps. Statistics on domestic product by Indian state, broken down by industry, are regularly published. But despite demands and recommendations by various commissions and policymakers, a comprehensive system of regional accounts is yet to be developed. New estimates for the period 1993-2010 are presented for saving and the macro-economic expenditure by Indian states, like final consumption, capital formation, and trade balance. They show, for example, that some of the fastest growing Indian states have increased their saving and investment rates to 50 percent of their domestic product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses OECD data to examine changes in labor productivity, real gross domestic product (GDP) and real gross domestic income (GDI), economic aggregates, and relative economic growth over time. Real GDI combines changes in production (real GDP) with a trading gain derived from relative price changes. The paper considers two sources of trading gains: the terms of trade, and the real exchange rate. For OECD countries, the terms of trade is the more important price ratio, making a contribution to real income growth that is, on average, an order of magnitude larger than the real exchange rate. Over long time periods, the most important source of real income growth is changes in production. Over shorter time horizons, however, the trading gain can make noteworthy contributions. Changes in aggregates like real private consumption, or the relative economic performance of nations, are shown to be particularly dependent on the trading gain during the large swings in resource prices that occurred post-2002. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes annual revisions of figures for G.N.P. and 8 of its components in 40 countries. It arrives at the conclusion that first estimates are very often significantly biased downwards, especially Private Consumption, Fixed Investment, G.D.P. and G.N.P. Also successive revisions are sometimes correlated (negatively in most cases). The distribution of revisions differ as between developed and developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares preliminary estimates (available about four months after the close of the period to which they refer) with final estimates (available three years after the close of the period) for certain national accounting aggregates and some of their major components. It concludes that preliminary estimates are consistently low for gross domestic product, exports, and public consumption, whereas imports, private consumption, and gross capital formation may be either low or high. The best early estimates, in the sense of closest to the final figures, are those for gross domestic product, imports, and exports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several recent studies of short-cut estimates comparing real income (on a purchasing power basis) of countries are reviewed, including methods comparing real income based on indicators, like electricity consumption. New estimates are presented for 101 countries which had a tradition of conventional national income estimates in 1965, and for 40 countries without extended national income series. One conclusion from the empirical analysis was that until there exist a large number of countries for which purchasing power estimates of real income are available, it is difficult to discriminate between alternative short-cut methods using indicators, and difficult to estimate real per capita incomes of low income countries without substantial errors of estimate. The paper advocates more purchasing power estimates, and institutionalizing the collection of international prices of specified items so that abbreviated market baskets can be readily compared across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss a few of the problems that have been encountered in defining output and in comparing prices for the International Comparison Project (ICP). We report also on the way in which these problems are being met. The ICP has for its purpose the establishment of a systematic set of procedures for making international comparisons of gross domestic product (GDP) and of the purchasing power of currencies. Substantive work on comparisons involving Colombia, the European Economic Community (EEC), Hungary, India, Japan, Kenya, the United Kingdom and the United States is also being carried on with the aid of the statistical services of the countries and or the EEC. It is hoped to expand the comparisons beyond these countries as rapidly as possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framed in the context of the ongoing revision of the 1993 System of National Accounts (SNA), this note proposes a new presentation of the National Accounts. While it does not require new information, nor difficult calculations, it is suggested to be conceptually clearer and practically simpler. The changes concern the treatment of taxes and government in the national accounts which imply that: (i) GDP, measured at basic price, is now exactly the sum of all value added, which is split in the compensation of employees and an enlarged operating surplus; (ii) the two functions of government are clearly distinguished in a modified sequence of accounts, that is, as producing non-market services up to the allocation of primary income account, and then as redistributing the national income; and (iii) with a conventional allocation of government services and GDP broken down between market GDP and non-market GDP, households remain the only final consumer and the so called question of consumption subsidies is resolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While GDP is the appropriate measure of output, I argue that Weitzman's NDP (WNDP)—nominal net domestic product deflated by the price of consumption—is the appropriate measure of welfare. Total factor productivity (TFP) growth measures the shift in the GDP frontier, and there is an analogous concept for WNDP, which I call total factor welfare (TFW) growth. I calculate and compare WNDP and GDP, and TFP and TFW, for the United States in the 1990s. I find that the acceleration of WNDP post 1995 was as great as that of GDP, even though the aggregate depreciation rate was rising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]