This joint publication of the United Nations, the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the World Bank reflects the changes and improvements that have been introduced to the System of National Accounts since its most recent revision in 1993. The System of National Accounts 2008 (2008 SNA) is a statistical framework that provides a comprehensive, consistent and flexible set of macroeconomic accounts for policymaking, analysis and research purposes. The 2008 SNA is expected to receive distinguished attention not only from professionals practicing in the field of national accounts but policy makers, analysts, academia and a broad range of users who rely on macroeconomic information obtainable from the updated system of accounts. It also provides an overarching framework for standards in other domains of economic statistics, facilitating the integration of these statistical systems to achieve consistency with national accounts. The publication that contains the 2008 SNA has been substantially updated from its previous version as a result of a multiyear collaborative project. Annex 3 of the publication provides a detailed description of the new features of the 2008 SNA. The 2008 SNA will support the implementation of international standards in national accounting and provide the methodological basis for improving the international comparability of national accounts data. When adopting the 2008 SNA as the updated new standard of national accounting, the United Nations Statistical Commission encouraged all countries to compile and report their national accounts on the basis of the 2008 SNA as soon as possible. The publication also provides practical new tools to complement the previously published version: a glossary of SNA terms and definitions and a comprehensive index.

This is an update of OECD 2006 "Understanding National Accounts". It contains new data, new chapters and is adapted to the new systems of national accounts, SNA 2008 and ESA 2010.

This paper analyzes the evolution of national accounts statistics compilation practices over the period of 2018 to 2021 for 189 economies. This is useful information for monitoring the quality of national accounts statistics and supporting identification of areas for improvement. Economies can use this data to benchmark their practices to the region and the world. Many economies have made strides in implementing 2008 SNA to better reflect the size and structure of the economy however, there hasn’t been an assessment on how quick the migration is. With the new 2025 SNA vintage on the horizon, it was imperative to check how many economies are using the 2008 SNA vintage as it will provide a clue to how fast authorities will migrate to the new framework. We found that 31 economies have moved to the 2008 SNA between 2018 and 2021. The paper also examined how many economies started compiling quarterly GDP during the period 2018 and 2021.

Global growth is forecast at 3.0 percent for 2019, its lowest level since 2008–09 and a 0.3 percentage point downgrade from the April 2019 World Economic Outlook.

The Guide contains information and recommendations for research teams and copyright professionals studying the contribution of the copyright-based industries to the national economy. This publication is intended as a practical tool to facilitate national and regional surveys. The Guide lays out the thrust of the main legal, economic and statistical concepts, relevant to the survey. This Guide also contains a glossary of copyright terms.

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year “An intellectual excursion of a kind rarely offered by modern economics.” —Foreign Affairs Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the most widely discussed work of economics in recent years. But are its analyses of inequality and economic growth on target? Where should researchers go from there in exploring the ideas Piketty pushed to the forefront of global conversation? A cast of leading economists and other social scientists—including Emmanuel Saez, Branko Milanovic, Laura Tyson, and Michael Spence—tackle these questions in dialogue with Piketty. “A fantastic introduction to Piketty’s main argument in Capital, and to some of the main criticisms, including doubt that his key equation...showing that returns on capital grow faster than the economy—will hold true in the long run.” —Nature “Piketty’s work...laid bare just how ill-equipped our existing frameworks are for understanding, predicting, and changing inequality. This extraordinary collection shows that our most nimble social scientists are responding to the challenge.” —Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan

After strong growth in 2017 and early 2018, global economic activity slowed notably in the second half of last year, reflecting a confluence of factors affecting major economies. China’s growth declined following a combination of needed regulatory tightening to rein in shadow banking and an increase in trade tensions with the United States. The euro area economy lost more momentum than expected as consumer and business confidence weakened and car production in Germany was disrupted by the introduction of new emission standards; investment dropped in Italy as sovereign spreads widened; and external demand, especially from emerging Asia, softened. Elsewhere, natural disasters hurt activity in Japan. Trade tensions increasingly took a toll on business confidence and, so, financial market sentiment worsened, with financial conditions tightening for vulnerable emerging markets in the spring of 2018 and then in advanced economies later in the year, weighing on global demand. Conditions have eased in 2019 as the US Federal Reserve signaled a more accommodative monetary policy stance and markets became more optimistic about a US–China trade deal, but they remain slightly more restrictive than in the fall.

This report assesses how Kazakhstan measures up in the development and application of its national health accounts, delivering a set of recommendations to improve the health spending information necessary to support health system performance.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) launched the data standards initiatives to enhance member countries’ data transparency and to promote their development of sound statistical systems. The need for data standards was highlighted by the financial crises of the mid-1990s, in which information deficiencies were seen to play a role. Under the data standards initiatives, the IMF established the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) in 1996 to provide guidance to countries that have or seek access to capital markets to disseminate key data so that users in general, and financial market participants in particular, have adequate information to assess the economic situations of individual countries. The SDDS not only prescribes that subscribers disseminate certain data categories, but also prescribes that subscribers disseminate the relevant metadata to promote public knowledge and understanding of their compilation practices with respect to the required data categories. In 1997, the IMF introduced under the initiatives the General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) to provide a framework for countries that aim to develop their statistical systems, within which they can work toward disseminating comprehensive and reliable data and, eventually, meet SDDS requirements. At the Eighth Review of the Fund’s Data Standards Initiatives in February 2012, the IMF’s Executive Board approved the SDDS Plus as an upper tier of the Fund’s data standards initiatives. The SDDS Plus is open to all SDDS subscribers and is aimed at economies with systemically important financial sectors.

Global growth for 2018–19 is projected to remain steady at its 2017 level, but its pace is less vigorous than projected in April and it has become less balanced. Downside risks to global growth have risen in the past six months and the potential for upside surprises has receded. Global growth is projected at 3.7 percent for 2018–19—0.2 percentage point lower for both years than forecast in April. The downward revision reflects surprises that suppressed activity in early 2018 in some major advanced economies, the negative effects of the trade measures implemented or approved between April and mid-September, as well as a weaker outlook for some key emerging market and developing economies arising from country-specific factors, tighter financial conditions, geopolitical tensions, and higher oil import bills. The balance of risks to the global growth forecast has shifted to the downside in a context of elevated policy uncertainty. Several of the downside risks highlighted in the April 2018 World Economic Outlook (WEO)—such as rising trade barriers and a reversal of capital flows to emerging market economies with weaker fundamentals and higher political risk—have become more pronounced or have partially materialized. Meanwhile, the potential for upside surprises has receded, given the tightening of financial conditions in some parts of the world, higher trade costs, slow implementation of reforms recommended in the past, and waning growth momentum.