Institution

Eurostat

Year

2021

Level

Basic

Abstract

EURONA – an open access, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal on methodology, techniques, standards, methods and practices on National Accounts and macroeconomic indicators. EURONA, 2019/1 This first issue of 2019 includes articles on the measurement of economic well-being and sustainability, of activities of multinational enterprises, of the employment content of EU exports and of the consistency of national accounts and balance of payments statistics. EURONA, 2019/2 This second issue of 2019 includes articles on the measurement of public goods, on extended supply and use tables, on residential property price indices and consumer price indices for package holidays based on big data. EURONA, 2018/2 Chapter Two of the second edition of 2018 discusses a theoretical possibility of expanding the coverage of illegal economic activities (IEAs) in possible areas that go beyond the minimum recommendations adopted in a number of European countries. It also investigates the relevance and sources for statistics on additional IEAs within national accounts. The study further suggests that a broad set of IEAs under the heading of online services could be of interest in terms of their economic significance and that this area may be worthy of further investigation. EURONA, 2018/1 Chapter One of the first edition of 2018 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. EURONA, 2017/2 Chapter Three of the second edition of 2017 provides an overview of the methods developed so far to measure intangible assets and to evaluate their contribution to economic growth. It reviews the work carried out under the INTAN-Invest research collaboration and the SPINTAN EU Funded project to generate cross-country estimates of intangible investments coherent with the Corrado, Hulten and Sichel (2005) model. It also provides a summary of recent empirical evidence on the role of intangible capital as a driver of growth across industries and sectors in European countries and the US as an illustration of uses of the intangibles assets data. EURONA, 2017/1 Chapter One of the first edition of 2017 addresses the inconsistencies in the comparisons of output growth and inflation across groups of countries. We address two issues: (i) how to measure aggregate real output and inflation for groups of countries and (ii) how to construct measures of real GDP for a group of countries where the country measures of real GDP are consistent across time and space. A method is proposed for harmonizing conflicting estimates of OECD member-country real GDP, ensuring consistency over space and overall group consistency over time. The results are general and can be used also in other regional contexts in other parts of the world. EURONA, 2016/1 This first issue of 2016 includes articles on Bayesian estimation in national accounts, the use of scanner data for consumer price indices, the flash estimation of euro area and EU GDP and the consistency of national accounts and balance of payments statistics. EURONA, 2015/2, Chapter 2 This second issue of 2015 is dedicated to research that was presented at the conference ‘New Techniques and Technologies in Statistics’ (NTTS) in March 2015. Producing QNA estimates typically involves benchmarking previous years’ estimates, where an annual benchmark is available. In the absence of a current annual benchmark, extrapolation is required based on a modelled relationship with an indicator series. As additional benchmarks become available, published QNAs are revised. The authors of the paper seek methods to improve these revisions. They explore different benchmarking and forecasting combinations applied to both the ‘forward’ and ‘back’ series on Australian economic series and on synthesised data. They introduce metrics to assess different methods based on magnitude and timeliness of revisions, apparent bias, and preservation of movements from the indicator. EURONA, 2015/2, Chapter 3 This second issue of 2015 is dedicated to research that was presented at the conference ‘New Techniques and Technologies in Statistics’ (NTTS) in March 2015. The chapter covers benchmarking, composite indicators and data coverage. EURONA, 2015/1 In this first issue of 2015, four articles offer thought-provoking views on a wide range of subjects, including natural capital accounts, government finance statistics, goodwill and seasonal adjustment. The Seasonally Adjusted series of an aggregate can be obtained by seasonal adjusting it (direct approach) or by aggregating the seasonally adjusted individual series (indirect approach). It should be noted that, to-date, the literature has been mainly focusing on an a posteriori comparison among the results achieved by applying different approaches. This paper seeks to set out an a priori strategy for the identification of the most effective seasonal adjustment of the aggregate. EURONA, 2014/2 This second issue of 2014 is dedicated to the implementation of ESA 2010. It can also provide guidance in matters of implementing international recommendations for countries outside Europe. EURONA, 2014/1, Chapter 3 Chapter Three of the first edition of 2014 focuses on ‘intangible’ goods and assets, as these are inherently difficult to describe or define. For two centuries it has been common practice for economists to describe services as being intangible or immaterial goods even though they have nothing in common. Now, there is tendency to confuse intangibles with services. However, intangibles and services have become far too important in modern economies to be systematically misclassified. The paper proposes a new definition for intangible goods and goes on to examine their most important economic characteristics. In the 2008 SNA, the term ‘intangible fixed asset’ was replaced by the term ‘intellectual property product’, but this was simply a renaming exercise and not a substantive change. This Chapter proposes a very specific definition. EURONA, 2014/1, Chapter 4 Chapter Four of the first edition of 2014 considers how to integrate financial transactions into the balance sheet and production accounts of a nonfinancial firm. The paper argues that the choice of a reference interest rate is just as important for nonfinancial firms as it is for financial firms and that the choice of the reference rate is tied to the firm’s financing decisions. The choice of the reference rate determines the interest rate that enters into the user cost of capital for the nonfinancial firm. The paper also argues that nonfinancial firms can also generate financial flows that are analogous to FISIM (Financial Services Indirectly Measured) flows. The present System of National Accounts restricts FISIM to financial firms. In order to minimize the role of imputations, the paper considers a firm that raises capital at the beginning of the accounting period, engages in some form of productive activity during the period and then distributes the initial capital and any profits back to the capitalists who financed the firm.