Balance sheets, wealth account
Working Group on NTA Wealth Accounts
Conveners: Andrew Mason and Diana Stojanovic
One of the important goals for the NTA project is to construct wealth accounts. Wealth in the language of NTA consists of two components: assets and transfer wealth. The conceptual foundations for wealth accounts are provided by Ron Lee’s 1994 paper. In some recent papers transfer wealth estimates based on net transfers from the NTA flow account have been presented for NTA countries. Possible goals for this working group could be to:
- Further develop the conceptual framework for constructing wealth accounts in a manner that is consistent with the System of National Accounts;
- Review existing approaches to constructing transfer wealth, implicit debt, generational accounts, wealth measures used in the pension literature, etc.
- Identify important issues related to the construction of wealth accounts, such as, choice of the discount rate, methods for projecting public and private transfers, and changes in asset prices.
- Assess the availability and completeness of national balance sheets for NTA countries.
Many of these issues will probably be addressed by other working groups, e.g., the working groups on the public sector, generational accounts, and indicators.
If you are interested in participating in this working group, please email Diana with a cc to Andy.
First Meeting
Wednesday, June 9 1:30-3pm