Measuring the Government Sector of the U.S. Economic Accounts (1998) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Going Beyond the System of National Accounts
Going Beyond the System of National Accounts
Pages 17-21
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From page 17... ...
We believe that, while the United States should conform to the SNA in order to gain the benefits of international comparability, supplementary information should be provided, perhaps in the form of satellite accounts. Particularly needed is the development of measures of the rate of return on public investment.
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From page 18... ...
Several possible measures of net return have been suggested, including: the discount rate established by OMB for evaluating costs and benefits of proposed federal capital projects; the municipal bond rate; the rate of return on comparable private business activities; and the development of valuation measures of public output independent of the costs of inputs, thus permitting application of techniques used to compute private rates of return. The first of these alternatives, the OMB discount rate, offers the advantages of simplicity, reasonable stability, and consistency with the federal government's conclusions as to what the minimum expected rate of return ought to be in order for a federal investment to be undertaken.
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From page 19... ...
We do not support including them in the official national account measures of investment at this time, but BEA should move forward with the development of supplementary measures. The SNA provides for the development of "satellite accounts" supplementary presentations of information in a framework consistent with the national accounts.
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From page 20... ...
The existing BEA annual measures of tangible wealth do not include the value of either renewable or nonrenewable natural resources, whether privately or publicly owned (Bureau of Economic Analysis, 1993b, 1994b)
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From page 21... ...
Possibilities for incorporating the results of this research into the national accounts should be explored; more generally, research on incorporating market information into measures of government output and on alternative approaches to measuring government productivity should be vigorously pursued. Recommendation The United States played a leadership role in the recent revision of the SNA, accompanied by an internationally agreed upon research agenda covering most of the areas discussed above.
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