Some Conceptual Dilemmas In The Use Of Present National Accounts

The following note is a very concise summary of a paper2 that was presented at the 17th General Conference of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth at Montvillargenne, August, 1981. As such it may be considered a new paper, although it contains practically all the conceptual issues of the original paper. As in the original paper its intention is only to place these issues before a wider audience, while specific solutions will have to wait for a more detailed treatment. All issues concern certain conceptual dilemmas, arising in particular in the use of national accounts when available concepts do not coincide with those for which data are sought. A decision to change the existing basic concepts would however require not only the support of the scholars in this field but also the co‐operation of the users of national accounts. Due to extreme summarizing, certain statements are now fairly compact—compared with the original paper. It is nevertheless hoped that the basic problems still shine through. The following note gives instances in which the traditional national accounts, as established according to existing rules and statistics, may not suffice for actual data requirements, yielding differences in growth rates of several percentage points.