The U.S. National Income and Product Accounts: Selected Topics

The main topics treated in this conference volume are problems of deflation and quality change, the adequacy of the data used to construct the US national accounts, and the broad theoretical evolution of the US national income and product accounts. As these topics suggest, the emphasis of this volume is on the information content of the national accounts system rather than on concepts and structure. This emphasis is particularly useful in light of the greatly increased role played by the national accounts in public and private decision making.
The treatment of quality change and deflation is a special feature of this volume. Individual papers are devoted to both theory and practice: the method actually used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to make quality adjustments in calculating the producer price index; deflating defense expenditures; quality change in capital goods and, in particular, how reduced operating costs affect measurement of commercial aircraft prices; and conceptual issues in quality adjustments.