Regional Accounts
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Government Finances, Economic statisticsBo Siemsen
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The purpose of regional accounts is to describe the economic activity in the regions and provinces within the framework of national accounts definitions and classifications. In January 1999, the present Danish regional accounts were first published. The accounts are based on the Danish national accounts, which are compiled in accordance with the guidelines set out in ESA2010. Data is not comparable with former versions of regional accounts that are compiled using both different sources and methods. On the other hand comparability among other European countries is possible. The regional accounts are published at the NUTS II level (regions) and NUTS III level (provinces).
Statistical presentation
Regional accounts describe the geographical dimension of production and income conditions as these are compiled in the functional national accounts using the production approach. The regional allocation aims at adding output and value added etc. to the region in which production takes place, mainly the residences of production or local kind-of-activity units. This is different to e.g. income statistics where the calculation is based on the recipients address. Regional accounts contain information on output, intermediate consumption and gross value added in both current and chained 2005-prices as well as other taxes less subsidies on production, compensation of employees, and gross operating surplus and mixed income in current prices. Moreover information on the number of salary earners and total employment is also compiled. GDP by region is published both in total and per capita.
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Statistical processing
The regional accounts are compiled from the production side.
In connection with regional allocation there are two principles:
- Bottom-up approach, where regional information is used directly
- Top-down approach, where regional indicators which are closely related to the variable, which should be allocated, are used as distribution keys.
Often a combination of the two methods is used.
Often a combination of the two methods is used. In the Danish regional accounts very often a so called "pseudo bottom-up/technical top-down" method is used. This means that you technical use the top-down method, but that the distribution key is of the same type of data as the national variable, that they are meant to distribute. An example of this is the Accounts Statistics, which is carried out at the work-place level and is are used as a source in both the national and the regional accounts.
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Relevance
National and regional accounts are relevant for all, who deal with economic and regional matters.
Accuracy and reliability
Regional accounts are subject to the same margins of uncertainty as the annual national accounts and the inaccuracy here relates to the inaccuracy of the various sources used. However, the conceptual consistency and over time uniform adaptation of the sources contribute to reduce the inaccuracy of the national accounts figures. In particular, the combination of the primary sources into a coherent system in many cases reveals errors, which are therefore not reflected in the final national accounts. With regard to the regional dimension the following factors can be mentioned:
- Concerning the regionalisation of each industry, a certain margin of uncertainty, both with respect to concepts and data, is associated with the areas of: Transport, financial intermediation and insurance and pension funding. Conceptually, it is e.g. difficult to determine the location for the production of railway services, and as far as the figures are concerned, the use of quantitative indicators for the regionalisation of economic variables is necessary.
- Regarding price indices the regional accounts are deflated on the basis of the national price indices, which may affect the figures at chained prices to the extent that there are regional differences in prices.
- Furthermore, the convention generally applied by Eurostat in compiling GDP is that taxes less subsidies on products are regionally allocated in proportion with gross value added. It goes without saying that as far as concepts are concerned, it is not possible to establish an objective criterion for this allocation. To a certain extent, this may have an effect on the accuracy of the calculation of growth in each region.
There are no measures of margins of uncertainty.
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Timeliness and punctuality
First version of regional accounts is published 12 month after the reference year. Final regional accounts are published 3 years after the reference year. Regional accounts have a high degree of punctuality
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Comparability
There is a close relationship between the national accounts and the regional accounts. Regional accounts are consistent with the national accounts, as the sum of the figures for each region with respect to each individual variable is equal to the national accounts value for the same variables. Consequently, each variable can be interpreted in the same manner as the national accounts variables, and the data sources and methods used in the national accounts are part of regional accounts. As mentioned, the regional accounts are based on guidelines set out in ESA2010 and are thereby directly comparable with other regional accounts from the EU Member States.
Accessibility and clarity
News from Statistics Denmark, Statistical News (National Accounts and Balance of Payment) and Statbank Denmark (http://www.Statbank.dk).
Regional accounts by 38 industries and 11 provinces/5 regions are available (at a charge). Furthermore regional data can be provided (at a charge) for groups of municipalities with a joint population of at least 100.000 inhabitants.In addition GDP and other non-industry data is available for municipalities with a population of at least 10.000 inhabitants.