Towards complete strongbalancestrong sheets in the national accounts - The.pdfVIP

TOWARDS COMPLETE BALANCE SHEETS IN THE NATIONAL ACCOUNTS – THE CASE OF SUBSOIL ASSETS Paul Schreyer* Carl Obst Organisation for Economic Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute Co-operation and Development University of Melbourne Preliminary draft 8 August 2014 *This paper reflects the view of the authors and not necessarily those of the OECD or its Member Countries. The paper was presented at the Conference of the Society for Economic Measurement in Chicago (August 2014) and the meeting of the Strategic Forum in Rome (September 2014). The authors thank participants for helpful comments that will be instrumental for a forthcoming revision of the paper. 1. Introduction In official government statistics, the measurement of wealth has been overshadowed by work on the measurement of economic growth, changes in prices and employment. Consequently, analysis of the well established theoretical links between wealth and the sustainability of economic growth, and well- being more generally (Stiglitz et al. 2009, OECD 2011, 2013) have not been supported by well established, national data sets. Instead, at national level, measures of wealth are generally more piece-meal with various information on the stock of produced assets (buildings, machines, etc), the value of financial assets and liabilities and some information on the value of land. Only few countries feature complete balance sheets including information on natural resources and even fewer have made attempts to develop estimates of environmental assets, and human and social capital. As consideration of the issues of sustainability g