The National Accounting Matrix including Environmental Accounts (NAMEA) shows environmental burdens that are consistent with the economic figures in the national accounts. In the NAMEA, the existing national accounts matrix has been extended with accounts in physical units. On the basis of the expected contribution of each polluting substance to a particular environmental problem, emissions are converted to theme equivalents. This results in six summary environmental indicators that are directly comparable to the conventional economic aggregates. In addition, this meso‐level information system can be used as the core data framework for integrated analyses and forecasts of economic and environmental changes.
The increasing number of countries for which a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) has been compiled testifies to the usefulness of this integrated data framework. Considerable resources are always involved in the construction of a SAM, for it provides a comprehensive description of an economy with emphasis on distributive aspects. This means that, unlike other data systems, incomes and expenditures of several categories of households and their relation to the production structure, the balance of payments and transactions by other institutions are shown.
However, apart from this minimum requirement, no standardized concepts and guidelines for SAM construction are as yet available. Although a SAM should stay as close as possible to the specific (institutional) reality of the economy it describes, some general remarks as to its design and compilation are in order. This paper represents a first attempt in that direction. After a general introduction to SAMs, each stage of the construction process is reviewed in turn.
The construction process begins with the overall design of the system and various options are discussed. This section includes a schematic representation of a fairly extensive SAM. Next, the sources for the SAM need to be identified, and a provisional checklist is given here. After an overview of considerations regarding the choice of a reference year, the topic of classification in the SAM is reviewed in detail. Finally, the paper describes how the different data sets might be integrated and reconciled for consistency.
The guidelines may also aid in designing a time schedule and in organizing the work when constructing a SAM.
National accounts are a macro-economic accounting system that is compiled on the basis of a globally harmonized accounting standard, that is SNA93/ESA95. To a large extent, the SNA93/ESA95 accounting principles are also suitable for government (micro-)accounting purposes, if only because the accounts drawn up according to this standard are comparable across (types of) units and over time. That facilitates performance monitoring and benchmarking. In addition, the ESA95 guidelines and procedures deal with innovative transactions and accounting, which increases the credibility of the accounts. Finally, accounts for government units are then directly comparable with the macroeconomic accounts, which facilitates the link between forecasts for the national economy and drawing up government budgets. This paper also describes the present conversion of government accounts to national accounts for the government sector in the Netherlands and the plans of the Dutch government to change from a cash-based to an accrual government accounting system. Copyright 2004 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
The national accounting matrix including environmental accounts (NAMEA) contains figures on environmental burdens in relation to economic developments as reflected in the national accounts. In the NAMEA, existing national accounts matrices have been extended with accounts in physical units. Since 1994, the NAMEA is a regular part of the annual Dutch national accounts. In this article, an aggregate NAMEA will be described. Next, the contribution of economic activities to economic indicators is compared with their contribution to environmental themes, both based on the information in the NAMEA. In addition, the cumulative contribution of economic activities to economic and environmental indicators are also given, thus taking into account the relations between the production activities. Finally, a number of recent applications and extensions of the NAMEA in the Netherlands are described.
This article outlines a statistical information system that serves to monitor and analyze the interactions between economic development ahd social change. This so-called SESAME links the monetary data in the national accounts to non-monetary social and environmental data, and yields a consistent set of core indicators on the development of national welfare.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.