"Improving Economic Statistics in order to Improve Economic Policy and Research: （4）An International Comparison with respect to 93SNA, supply-use tables, productivity index, deflators, and the public sector "output"" (in Japanese)

This is the fourth article in my series, "Improving Economic Statistics in order to Improve Economic Policy and Research". It fleshes out some of the issues presented in the first article, Miwa [2014a]. The second and third articles (Miwa, 2014b, c) investigate the availability and usefulness of several major sources of economic indices in service sectors: e.g., input-output tables (IO tables), GDP deflators, and productivity (growth) indexes. In particular, they examine IO tables and SNA base-year annual estimates. They conclude that the nominal GDP, GDP deflators and real GDP, GDP growth rate, inflation rate, and real productivity growth rate (both for the overall economy and the individual sectors) depend fatally on unclear generation methods (both statistical information based on and estimation methods). Relevant information simply is not disclosed. Focusing on the big changes in the past 20∼30 years and the direction of their future transformation in many statistically advanced countries, this article finds that the issues I investigated in Miwa [2014b, c] are closely related to the ones in which those countries have made major improvements. At present, (19)93SNA plays the basic role in designing and formulating the statistical system in most countries. From among the major changes in SNA (GDP) statistics observed in the past few decades, I select four points for investigation: （1） supply-use tables and input-output tables;（2）productivity indexes；（3） "output" volume in the public sector; and（4）deflators in individual service sectors. On the whole this international comparison focuses on the improvement in service sector statistics in response to their rapidly increasing share, and on policy responses in statistically advanced countries to the 93SNA that reflects the accumulation of experiences and know-how in those countries since the 68SNA. Given the publication of the 93SNA report and the active participation of many countries in the recent international movement reflecting it, Japan still lags its peers. It has not yet decided how to move forward. Neither does it seem to have any intention of searching for and determining how to join its peers.