"The Good the Bad and the Ugly: Lessons learnt in estimating the value added of the island’s primary sector and Results"

A greater emphasis in mathematical and statistical rigour is now expected in economics and economic history. Ad-Hoc procedures and guestimates are unpopular and considered unreliable. Yet a substantial amount of research relies on historical national accounts (HNAs) that would not satisfy criteria of robustness that the overall research itself entails. One could argue in order to have in order to have reliable results in one’s research, the underlying dataset needs to be reliable. This paper will present the gross output and value added of Cyprus and Malta in the Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing sector and the Mining sector. Such an exercise is fraught with difficulty. The dataset was fragmented and unreliable. As a result methodologies were employed that would not be acceptable in current national accounting. Here such methods are made explicit as the good, the bad and the ugly.