External Sector Transactions: Toward a World Accounting Matrix

Abstract

The increasing internationalization of production and finance puts higher demands on the availability and quality of data on external transactions. Domestic economic policies increasingly have to internalize global economic events and require full consistency of detailed information on the international economy with that of the national economy. One of the main goals of the revised System of National Accounts (SNA) of the United Nations has been to harmonize the system with related systems of macroeconomic accounts, such as the IMF’s balance of payments statistics (BOPS) and money and banking statistics (MBS). Conceptually the new SNA has come close to achieving this goal. In practice, in achieving greater harmony (and reliability) in the actual measurement of international economic transactions, there is still a long way to go. Where the SNA provides a framework for consistent accounting of supply and demand and of incomes and expenditures at the national level for individual countries, there is no standardized accounting system that cheeks such consistency at the global level.