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National Accounts in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

D. A. Lury
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Extract

There was a considerable increase in the number of African countries compiling national accounts during the 1950's; ‘what was once the happy hunting ground of the independent research worker has become the routine preoccupation of official statisticians and international Civil Servants.’1 A comparison of the methods of calculation in use was speeded up when the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa was established, and the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (made up of national accounts workers in different countries) sponsored a regional conference for Africa in January 1961. Official statisticians at that conference proceeded immediately to a U.N.E.C.A. meeting and considered the role national accounts calculations could play in Africa, and how far a standardised system was possible. This article reviews the published papers considered at the I.A.R.I.W. conference, and other relevant publications recently becoming available.2

Type
Review Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , March 1964 , pp. 99 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1964

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References

Page 99 note 1 Deane, Phyllis, reviewing some calculations for The Economic Journal (London), 09 1961, p. 630.Google Scholar

Page 99 note 2 References to publications listed in the Appendix to this article are given as numbers in the text (A3, A7, etc.), sometimes with page references as well.

Page 99 note 3 Keynes, J. M.' ‘popular’ pamphlet How to pay for the War (London, 1940)Google Scholar illustrates both these points. The chapter on ‘The Use and Development of National Income and Expenditure Estimates’ by Stone, J. R. N. in Lessons of the British War Economy (Cambridge, 1951)Google Scholar is a convenient summary of wartime and immediate post-war thinking.

Page 101 note 1 Seers, Dudley, ‘The Role of National Income Estimates in the Statistical Policy of an Under-developed Area’, The Review of Economic Studies (Edinburgh), XX, 3, 1952–1953, p. 166.Google Scholar

Page 101 note 2 U. N., A System of National Accounts and Supporting Tables (frequently referred to as S.N.A.), Studies in Method, Series F., no. 2, rev. i (New York, 1960).Google Scholar

Page 101 note 3 Frankel, S. H., The Economic Impact of Under-developed Countries (Oxford, 1953), pp. 30–1.Google Scholar Essay III discusses in detail economic concepts of income in relation to under-developed countries.

Page 102 note 1 In the document the word ‘non’ appears: it seems clearly a misprint for ‘own’.

Page 103 note 1 Seers, op. cit. See also further articles by Prest and others in vols. XX-XXII of The Review of Economic Studies.

Page 105 note 1 A convenient textbook account of the French system is given in Piatier, A., Statistique et observation économique, vol. II (Paris, 1961), pp. 827–75.Google Scholar

Page 105 note 2 See e.g.Goldsmith, R. and Saunders, C. (eds.), Income and Wealth, Series VIII (London, 1959).Google Scholar

Page 106 note 1 Nemchinov, V. S., ‘Statistical & Mathematical Methods in Soviet Planning’, in Barna, T. (ed.), Structural Interdependence and Economic Development (London, 1963), p. 175.Google Scholar

Page 106 note 2 See e.g. J., and Hackett, A-M., Economic Planning in France (London, 1963).Google Scholar

Page 106 note 3 See Leontief, W. W., Structure of American Economy, 1919–1929 (New York, 1941),Google Scholar and Studies in the Structure of the American Economy (New York, 1953).Google Scholar

Page 106 note 4 Marczewski, J., Gilbert, M., and Stone, R. (eds.), Income and Wealth, Series IV, (London, 1955), p. 241.Google Scholar

Page 106 note 5 Peacock, A. T. and Dosser, D. G., ‘Input-Output Analysis in an Under-developed Country, A Case Study’, in The Review of Economic Studies, XXIV, 3, 1956–1957.Google Scholar

Page 107 note 1 H. B.Chenery in Barna (ed.), op. cit. p. 14.

Page 107 note 2 We should not be over sanguine about the possibility of transplanting this technique: it has been argued that it is effective in France because ‘the same type of men are sitting both in the management and the Civil Service posts’. Granick, D., quoted in P.E.P., , French Planning (London, 1963), p. 346.Google Scholar