Linkages Between Macro And Micro Business Accounts: Implications For Economic Measurement

The paper shows the relationship between microbusiness accounting based on double‐entry bookkeeping and macroeconomic accounting based on quadruple‐entry bookkeeping. In order for microaccounts to successfully aggregate into macroaccounts (i.e. preserve macro/micro linkages), quadruple‐entry bookkeeping requires that the traditional double entries, recorded by transacting microbusiness units, be “consistent” with each other. In fact national economic accounting implicitly assumes that such consistency is maintained when national “aggregates” are uniquely extracted from national accounts and when national “identities” are claimed to hold true. The main purpose of the paper is to show important examples where quadruple‐entry consistency is not satisfied. These examples typically involve “complex” economic transactions between business units in which the legal form of the transactions do not necessarily represent their economic substance. When this occurs, different business units have genuinely divergent conceptions and perceptions with respect to their mutual economic transactions. Therefore, microbusiness accounts cannot be successfully aggregated into macroeconomic accounts without violating the integrity of microdecision making records. The conclusion of the paper introduces a new theory called Perpetual Imbalanced Accounting. The theory shows that inconsistent (or imbalanced) economic accounting does tend to become consistent (or balanced) over sufficiently long time periods. Therefore, we must adopt a more dynamic view of national accounting if we desire to preserve successful macro/micro linkages. However, the problems of imbalanced macroaccounting and its statistical consequences cannot be entirely avoided no matter how long the accounting time period is taken. All of the above have important implications for the revision of the United Nations System of National Accounts.