Publications & documents

Can potential mismeasurement of the digital economy explain the post-crisis slowdown in GDP and productivity growth?

Statistics Working Paper N. 85, 2017/9 - The digital economy has created some new measurement challenges for macroeconomic statistics and may have exacerbated some older ones, raising some concerns about the scope and estimation of GDP. Against a backdrop of slowing rates of measured productivity growth, this has raised questions about the conceptual basis of GDP and output...

A primer on government-sponsored pension schemes in the national accounts and their impact on the interpretation of government debt statistics

Statistics Working Paper N. 81, 2017/5 - Government debt has many characteristics and thus cannot be fully captured by one indicator. There are several different ways of defining government debt, and each definition can lead to different interpretations of a government’s financial situation. This working paper will summarise some of the major differences in defining and measuring government debt and, based on available data, ...

Expert Group on Disparities in a National Accounts Framework: results from the 2015 exercise

Statistics Working Paper N. 76, 2016/10 - In 2011, an Expert Group was launched to carry out a feasibility study on the compilation of distributional measures of income, consumption and wealth across household groups consistent with national accounts data. This group developed a methodology on the basis of which first experimental results on income, consumption and savings according to income quintiles were compiled and published...

Measuring GDP in a digitalised economy

Statistics Working Paper N. 73, 2016/7 - Recent years have seen a rapid emergence of new disruptive technologies with new forms of intermediation, service provision and consumption, with digitalisation being a common characteristic. These include new platforms that facilitate Peer-to-Peer transactions, such as AirBnB and Uber, new activities such as crowd sourcing,...

The drivers of differences between growth in GDP and household adjusted disposable income in OECD countries

Statistics Working Paper N. 71, 2016/6 - Growth in household income has evolved differently from gross domestic product (GDP) in most OECD countries over the last eighteen years. Using the wealth of information available in the System of National Accounts, this paper provides an assessment of what may be driving this gap

Eurostat-OECD Compilation guide on land estimations

Comparing profit shares in value-added in four OECD countries: Towards more harmonised national accounts

Statistics Working Paper N. 61, 2015/3 - This article gives methodological guidance on how best to compare the share of profits in value-added across countries using national accounts. The four countries covered are France, Germany, Italy and the United States.

New standards for compiling national accounts: what’s the impact on GDP and other macro-economic indicators? - OECD Statistics Brief N. 20

In 2009, the United Nations Statistical Commission endorsed a revised set of international standards for the compilation of national accounts: the System of National Accounts (SNA) 2008, replacing the 1993 version of the SNA. By December 2014, most OECD countries had implemented the new standards. The actual implementation however varied depending on country circumstances.

Understanding National Accounts - Second Edition

Panorama des comptes nationaux 2014