Study On The Rationality Of Quarterly GDP's Accounting Methods

The social and economic statistics is essentially used to serve for the social and economic development. And whether the statistical data is true or not, it is directly ralated to the national macroeconomic policy-making. Since Thomas Rawski(2001)doubted about the authenticity of China's economic data in the year of 1998-1999, China's data quality problem is always an issue concerned by domestic and foreign scholars. In particular, after the outbreak of the international financial crisis, the domestic and foreign scholars have increasingly doubted on the quality of our country's macroeconomic statistical data. And graduately, the query has been transferred from annual data to quarter data, from nation-wide data to local data. Therefore, based on coping with various of queries systemtically, it is really necessary for us to have a deep analysis on backgrounds and causes of various of queries, and then improve and perfect the accounting methods of our country's GDP according to different causes seperately.As space is limited, in this paper, the author has just done a systematic research on the rationality of estimating methods of the current quarterly GDP. The text is composited of five chapters and the main contents of each section are as follows:Chapter one:introduction. It mainly introduces the background of the theme, analyzes the reasons of various of queries, summarizes the relative research results of the statistics department and the scholars both at home and abroad, and then briefly illustrates the research emphases, research approach, the main content of chapters, and innovation and deficiencies.Chapter two:the evolution process of quarterly GDP accounting. Firstly, this chapter has a brief research on accounting principles and particularity of quarter GDP, and then makes a comprehensive review on the accounting evolution process of our country's quarterly GDP, which is aimed to foreshadow the analysis for the next current accounting schemes.Chapter three:the rationality analysis and inspection for current quarterly GDP estimating methods. This chapter makes a induction and summary on the estimating method of quarterly added- value used by the industries in current quarterly GDP accounting schemes, and has deep analysis on their implicit assumptions and rationality. Then, the author uses qualitative and quantitative methods to inspect empirically whether those assumptions can be satisfied in reality based on the data's accessibility. We discover that there are five assumption premises implied in the current quarterly GDP accounting. But in different stages of economic development, each quarter often shows the phase characteristics which are different from the past years, so these assumption premises are failed to establish.Chapter four:the quality evaluation scheme and rationality of current quarterly GDP accounting. Our current area quality assessment method of GDP data (including assessment index system and evaluation methods) is reviewed in this paper. And it is discovered that the deficiency of three aspects is existed in the quality assessment of current district GDP data. So on the basis of research achievements for GDP data quality evaluation at home and abroad, we reconstruct evaluation index system including investment, consumption, exports, enterprise benefit, household income, taxes, energy consumption, goods transportation. Then, according to the improved evaluation index system, we have a test for regional quarterly GDP historical data through spatial panel model. And at the Census Bureau's request for the assessment of all regional quarter GDP accounting results, we explore the assessing idea and method of current quarter GDP accounting results with spatial section model.The test results of all regions historical quarterly GDP data show that the overall quarterly GDP in various areas matches well with assessment indexes, the reliability of regional quarterly GDP data is higher and obviously the phenomenon of data distortion does not exist.From the test of GDP quality in each quarter, we take the second quarter in 2008 for an example. It is discovered that even though GDP data quality of most provinces are relatively high and the matching of assessing indexes are good, in a few provinces, the problem of low GDP data quality and the bad matching of assessing indexes exists.Chapter five:some suggestions on perfect quarterly GDP accounting. This chapter is divided into two sections, the first part mainly focus on the improvement for quarterly GDP estimating method based on the materials of chapter three. And the second part discusses the improvement for current quarterly GDP assessment method according to the study of chapter four.Improvements of quarterly GDP accounting:1. ameliorate the current estimating methods of industries'gross domestic product(based on Production and Income); 2.subdivide the current Industry Classification of quarterly GDP accounting to improve the reliability in the process of estimation; 3.scale quarterly data source, creat basic data system for special quarterly statistical indicators; 4.make full use of GDP which account by expenditure approach and mutual support with Production GDP and Income GDP; 5. ameliorate regional GDP in Secondary industry and Services; 6. with other auxiliary methods.Improvements of quarterly GDP assessment:1.bring forward the methodology to improve the Evaluation index system; 2.set up composite and focus management system for GDP assessment.