Eurostat review on national accounts and macroeconomic indicators : 1/2015
In: 2015; (2015)
Online
Elektronische Ressource
Zugriff:
In this first issue of EURONA in 2015, four excellent articles offer thought-provoking views on a wide range of important issues with often long histories. The first article is by Walter Radermacher and Anton Steurer who discuss whether it is necessary to produce natural capital accounts in order to inform society about its progress towards sustainable development. The authors argue that great care is needed in using the term natural capital and in monetising natural assets, as the results may not provide useful information to policy makers. They believe that statisticians should focus on developing an integrated information system on the state of the natural environment, from which relevant policy indicators can be derived. The second and third articles have in common that they examine the relationship between national accounts and two of their most important data sources: government accounts and business accounts, respectively. Concepts and definitions are often different between government and business accounts on the one hand and national accounts on the other. This is not only a theoretical issue but also one with practical implications, as the government and business accounts provide much of the basic data for the national accounts. François Lequiller analyses in detail whether the standards covering government finance statistics and those covering public sector accounting could be brought closer together. Today government finance statistics play a central role in economic and monetary policy making in the EU. The author argues that having a unique system from micro level to macro level would significantly strengthen the accuracy and credibility of these statistics. He states that convergence of standards is possible if compromises are accepted on both sides. Itsuo Sakuma discusses the concept of goodwill as used, over the years, in business accounting and as it is included in the subsequent instances of the System of National Accounts (SNA). Goodwill is an asset in SNA, included primarily to be able to register business acquisitions. It is very hard to measure for national accountants and the author argues that, effectively, the SNA could well do without the very concept. The final article addresses another issue that has been the subject of debate for at least the last two decades, which is the use of direct or indirect methods to seasonally adjust aggregate economic indicators like GDP. Enrico Infante, Dario Buono and Adriana Buono present a method that can help to decide a priori whether to use a direct or indirect method by analyzing whether seasonal patterns of the underlying series are similar or not. This method could be of great benefit to practitioners faced with the wide array of available methods for seasonal adjustment
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Eurostat review on national accounts and macroeconomic indicators : 1/2015
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Commission, European ; Eurostat ; Konijn, Paul ; Sartore, Domenico ; Radermacher, Walter |
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Quelle: | 2015; (2015) |
Veröffentlichung: | 2015 |
Medientyp: | Elektronische Ressource |
ISSN: | 1977-978X (print) |
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