Real Output in Switzerland: New Estimates for 1913-1947

Abstract

The concepts and history of the measurement of aggregate economic activity are reviewed in the inserts "An Overview of the Concepts of National Output and Income" and "A Brief History of National Income and Product Accounts." 2 Our use of the terms prewar , interwar, and postwar follows Romer (1986, 1989, 1999). 3 Kuznets' estimates of U.S. GNP for the years after 1918 are based on a broad database that includes output of the industrial, agricultural, government, and service sectors. His estimates for the years prior to 1919, however, are obtained largely from commodity output data via multiplication by a scale factor; see Kuznets (1941, 1946), Romer (1989), and Balke and Gordon (1989). 4 See the insert "The Development of U.S. National Income Accounting" and Bureau of Economic Analysis (2000).

Estimates of real economic activity in Switzerland, 1886–1930

“…The first set starts in 1880 and comprises the production of beer, railway freight and passenger numbers. 1 To these variables, we by and by add time series with later starting dates to obtain other, increasingly larger, data sets. By considering also trade, for which data have been reported since 1885, we obtain the second data set.…”

“…The second study is by Andrist, Anderson and Williams [1], AAW in the following, which contains estimates of real output in Switzerland in the period 1914 to 1947. The authors carefully consider possible indicators of real output and use qualitative judgement to construct an index of economic activity at an annual frequency.…”