Looking from Gross Domestic Income: Alternative view of Japan’s economy

This study estimates the Gross Domestic Income (GDI) from taxation data by updating Fujiwara and Ogawa (2016, 2018). The National Account statistics in Japan derives GDI from GDP so that the national accounting identity always holds. However, from the experiences of the U.S. and Australia, where GDI is estimated independently from GDP, the identity does not hold in practice due to differences in data sources, inter alia. We find that the estimate of GDI exceeds GDP by about 20 trillion yen in 2019, which gives quite different readings of potential growth, labor share, household saving ratio, and saving-investment balance of both households and non-financial corporations in recent years. The present study likewise demonstrates how to combine the information of GDE and GDI to obtain true GDP.