PIB y estructura productiva en Uruguay (1870-2011): Revisión de series históricas y discusión metodológica

The elaboration and systematization of historical GDP series and its components have an important field of study over the last decades (CEPAL 2009, Smits et.al. 2009, Timmery De Vries 2007). There have been an increasing interest in the comparison of economic development region and important efforts have been made to construct long run national accounts. In Uruguay, the System of National Accounts began in 1955, and for the previous period we count on historical estimations based on different methodologies and coverage. Several factors, such a new base year for 2005, the availability of welfare indicators and the necessity to count on good measures of the economic performance, have motivated us to do a review of historical estimation and the methods, in order to construct consistent series. The general objective of this paper is, therefore, to estimate a homogeneous and consisten long run GDP series for Uruguay (1870-2011), in nominal and real terms, considering total GDP, per capita and sectorial composition. We present a review of the available historical estimation of GDP and its sectorial components, proposing different scenarios. We validate our results by comparing Uruguayan's performance to other countries and assessing its consistency with the historical context. Finally, we present a long run overview of the Uruguayan GDP and GDP per capita describing its growth rates and volatility according to the different "development models".