Intertemporal Comparability Of National Income In Czechoslovakia

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.