The national accounts for Italy, Spain and Portugal

Abstract

The paper deals with the development of historical national accounting in Italy, Spain and Portugal -three Latin countries with.generally speaking, the same statistical tradition.We present a detailed account of the literature with a critical assessment of the existing series and an agenda for further research.Italy is the country with a longer tradition in historical national accounting.while Portugal is just beginning to produce historical estimates.For each country we select the best existing estimates, that are published here for the first time -including a complete new set of output estimates for Portugal.We find a common pattern of GDP growth for all three countries -an intriguing feature that will deserve more attention in the future.The national accounts for Italy, Spain and Portugal, 1800-1990 1Italy and Portugal started their official national accounting during the years following the Second World War, when the need to participate in the Marshall Plan and in the new intemational organizations pushed their govemments to adopt these -at that time very new -tools.Spain, however, had to wait until 1954, when the American aid forced Spanish administration to comply with United Nations national accounting rules.Historical series were produced a few years later in Italy, and revised during the subsequent waves of interest in the topic.In Spain they came much later, and in Portugal almost the first series not simply derived from some indirect indicators are the ones presented in this paper.Most of the series of GOP for these three Latin countries are from the output side.Some calculations from the expenditure side also exist, especially for Italy.but nothing has been done from the income side.The lack of data from the income side is mainly due to the predominance of indirect taxation, a common feature of these countries.