Routledge Handbook of Macroeconomic Methodology

27 National accounts and macroeconomic methodology

Geoff Tily

DOI: 10.4324/9781315745992-32

Introduction¹

“While the GDP and the rest of the national income accounts may seem to be arcane concepts, they are truly among the great inventions of the twentieth century.”

(Paul A. Samuelson and William D. Nordhaus cited in Landefeld 2000, p. 6)

If anything, this remark – from a US Department of Commerce commemoration – is an under-exaggeration. The National Accounts are essential to the management and operation of a monetary economy. With money understood properly as a book entry, the accounts are a tangible record of the macroeconomic outcomes of monetary interactions. Like money, the Accounts are a social technology – inherent to economic and ...