Constructing Retrospective Time Series of Russian Input-Output Accounts Based on the NACE/CPA Classifications

Abstract

Time series of Input-Output (IO) accounts at current and constant prices are widely applied to study the dynamics and structure of economic activity within country and conduct cross-country comparisons and analyses of globalization processes as well as their impacts. For these purposes IO accounts have to adhere to a uniform nomenclature of products and economic activities in accordance with international standards. Unfortunately, Russian statistics currently do not satisfy this condition. The first Russian IO accounts for 2011, built in accordance with international standards, will be published only at the end of 2015 (previously published tables for 1995-2003 were built in the classifications "inherited" from the Soviet period). The IO accounts for 2012 and subsequent years will be built by extrapolating the cost structure of products and services for 2011. However, it leaves the open question of extending the time series of these tables for the retrospective period prior to 2011. As international experience shows, this type of calculation was predominantly conducted by research organizations and universities. Given this, the National Research University Higher School of Economics has been developing a methodology for constructing a retrospective time series of a part of the IO accounts (use tables and valuation matrices) from 2010, in order to experimentally test them, and apply them to the official IO accounts for 2011. The following results were obtained from our study. First, we proposed a two-step procedure to transform IO accounts for 2003 from the Soviet into the OKVED/OKPD classifications. Second, we used a two-stage biproportional method generalizing the RAS procedure to construct a time series of IO accounts for the subsequent period using the 2003 transformed IO accounts as the starting point. Finally, we recalculated a part of the IO accounts (use tables) at the previous year prices.