National Accounts

National Accounts (NA) are an integrated system of several flow and stock accounts reflecting the economic activity in a given past period. National accounts comprise domestic product calculations, input-output computations, financial accounts, labour volume accounts, and national wealth accounts. Other items are represented partly in so-called satellite accounts (for example household production, the environment). Approximately every five years, the results and methods of national accounts are revised fundamentally.

Domestic product calculations reflect in the form of figures the economic activity in a given past period. The resulting aggregates - above all the gross domestic product - are important for assessing and shaping economic policy.

Data are calculated and published on the production, expenditure, and distribution of the gross domestic product. To obtain the results, all appropriate continuous surveys of economic statistics are used.

Input-output computations, just as domestic product calculations, represent the production and the use of goods and services as well as the incomes generated as part of the production process. While domestic product calculations are designed above all to reflect market processes, input-output computations are aimed at a detailed representation of the interpenetration in terms of goods and production between the individual sectors of the national economy and also with the rest of the world. The units of analysis are defined according to characteristics that are relevant to production. The supply and use tables permit to change over from results of domestic product calculations to the results of input-output computations and vice versa. Major uses of input-output computations are studies of structural changes and model calculations as part of the input-output analysis.

The regional accounts for the Länder and Kreise (administrative districts) of the Federal Republic of Germany are calculated by the working party "National Accounts of the Länder".