This monograph proposes a new approach for measuring features of society’s subjective well-being, based on time allocation and affective experience. We call this approach National Time Accounting (NTA). National Time Accounting is a set of methods for measuring, comparing and analyzing how people spend and experience their time -across countries, over historical time, or between groups of peopl...

In the era of globalization and international trade, the production-based CO2 emissions accounting system, proposed by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, can easily lead to a “carbon leakage” issue. Thus, the accounting of consumption-based carbon emissions and carbon emissions embodied in international trade has received considerable research attention. Nevertheless, resear...

The United States is typically seen as an outlier in health spending when compared with other advanced nations. Recent improvements in health accounting in lower- and middle-income countries suggest some common features with the high and pluralistic spending in the United States. The author discusses recent developments and findings in health accounting outside the Organization for Economic Coo...

This note examines some of the major issues involves in the design of national economic accounts to measure non-market activity. It recommends using the design of National Economic Accounts (NEA) as the guiding principle for non-market accounts. Under this principle, nonmarket goods and services should be treated as if they were produced and consumed as market activities. The major exception to...

A conference on national health expenditures accounting was sponsored by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) in conjunction with its research center at the Rand Corporation and the University of California at Los Angeles and was co-chaired by Joseph P. Newhouse, Director, Rand/UCLA Center for Health Care Financing Research, and Daniel R. Waldo, Chief, Health Expenditures Branch, Div...

The views expressed in the paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Bureau of Economics or the Department of Commerce. Introduction There has been a great deal of recent attention directed to the importance of investments in intangibles in the growth of economies. The Bureau of Economic Analysis in 2006 and 2007 released R&D Satellite Accounts that illustrate how the incorporation of R...

The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) has importantly revised the methodology for estimating annual national health expenditures. Among other changes, the revisions estimated out-of-pocket spending directly, disaggregated expenditures to a greater degree, and reduced undercounting and double counting. Estimates of total spending and out-of-pocket spending changed. This article summari...