The system of national accounts and alternative economic perspectives

Alice Nakamura () and Leonard Nakamura

No 15-32, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

Abstract: Brent Moulton and Nicole Mayerhauser (2015) point out that, for more than 50 years, economists have featured the concept of human capital in their models of labor, growth, productivity, and distribution of income. The authors recommend the addition to the System of National Accounts (SNA) of supplemental person-level accounts: i.e., a System of Person Accounts (SPA). They see this as the best way of recognizing the processes of human capital creation as well as related issues of how income is distributed among individuals and families. The authors argue that this change would support three different perspectives from which economic activity can be viewed: (1) a current period outcomes perspective, (2) a risky possibilities perspective, and (3) a resources perspective. Moreover, these gains could be realized without changing the SNA in any substantial respects.

Keywords: National income accountings; Person accounts; Microdata; Human capital; risk; Capability; Welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 C82 D60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2015-09-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/asset ... ers/2015/wp15-32.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedpwp:15-32

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Beth Paul ().