This paper is an attempt to contribute to the discussion of research and development (R&D) capitalisation in the system of national accounts. The paper first spells out under which conditions knowledge creation truly leads to fixed assets in the national accounts sense. As a next step, R&D...

The origins of national accounting can be traced back to the 17th century. However, modern national accounts have largely developed since the late 1940s, although some initial forays commenced a couple of decades earlier. The three most important standards for the economic accounts are those for...

This chapter investigates recent advances in our understanding of the global distribution of income, and produces the first estimates of global inequality that take into account data on the incomes of the top one percent within countries. We discuss conceptual and methodological issues –...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal call to action to end poverty and protect the environment. The Government of Guatemala is prioritizing the SDGs it will focus on and defining lines of action to make progress towards achieving them. In this paper, we apply the Integrated...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015 represent a new global consensus to end poverty, promote prosperity, and protect the environment. Goal 8 seeks to improve global resource efficiency in consumption and production and to decouple economic growth...

This paper examines the status of GDP compilation in 189 economies against six key criteria that describe national accounts compilation practices: whether the benchmark year is up to date, the availability and timeliness of annual and quarterly GDP, whether GDP by production and expenditure...

The Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) can be considered a tool to be used for measuring a society's activity. It provides a description of that activity, which can be either empirical or theoretical, depending on whether it is presented in a numerical or an algebraic version, respectively. Special...

Economic growth is typically measured in per capita terms. But social welfare should arguably include the number of people as well as their standard of living. We decompose social welfare growth -- measured in consumption-equivalent (CE) units -- into contributions from rising population and...

This paper analyzes the availability, methodological soundness, and scope of National Accounts statistics in IMF member and non-member countries in 2020. National Account statistics are instrumental in the development of fiscal and monetary policy and in monitoring economic developments. This...

Standard ways of measuring real income are known to be inconsistent with consumer preferences. We provide preference-consistent estimates of real income, based on the income-specific price indices that are consistent with nonhomothetic preferences. We find that existing measures, such as Geary,...