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COMPARABILITY OF SAVING AND PROFIT RATIOS

OECD National Accounts Experts Meeting

Chateau de la Muette, Paris

7-10 October 2003

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Background

Discussion of alternative household saving measures at October 2002 NAEM

ECB/OECD project– Detailed examination of institutional sector accounts for the

euro area, the United States and Japan with particular emphasis on household saving ratios, profit ratios and investment ratios

Scope of this paper– Household saving ratios– Profit ratios

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Household saving ratios

Issues relating to the basic measure of the household saving ratio– Gross or net?– Include NPISH?– Change in net equity of households on pension funds– Adjusted household disposable income

Proposed definition for use in OECD Statistical Databases (including Annex Table 24 of Economic Outlook)

Further adjustments to the household saving ratio

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Statistical Annex Table 24, OECD Economic Outlook

Reproduced as Table 1 - shows household saving ratios for 21 member countries

Footnotes to this table indicate differences in the data currently being published for various countries

OECD Economics Department tends to use measures for the household saving ratio and other variables that will be readily recognised in the member countries– Hence what is published by member countries in their own

national accounts has an effect on international comparability

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Gross or net household saving

Net is the preferred measure Only use gross if COFC estimates are deficient Data for 7 countries is currently shown gross

Recommendation 1: It is recommended that the seven countries (Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) include household saving ratios in their national accounts publications on a net basis instead of, or in addition to, the gross measures.

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Include NPISH

Data for 5 countries currently exclude NPISH

Recommendation 2: In the interests of international comparability it is recommended that the five countries (Czech Republic, Finland, France, Japan and New Zealand) also include household saving ratios for households including NPISH in their national accounts publications.

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Change in net equity of households on pension funds

Current definition: B8 / (B6 + D8) Where B8 = Net household saving B6 = Net household disposable income D8 = Change in net equity of households on pension funds

Table 2 provides household saving ratios using this formula and data from the OECD annual SNA93 database

Recommendation 3: It is recommended that countries that have a non-nil value for the adjustment for the change in equity of households on pension funds (D8) should verify that their own saving ratios are consistent with this definition.

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Adjusted household disposable income

New concepts introduced in SNA93– Collective and individual consumption for general

government– Social transfers in kind– Actual final consumption– Adjusted household disposable income

New account in SNA93 – Use of adjusted disposable income account

These enable a more internationally comparable household saving ratio to be computed

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Adjusted household disposable income (cont)

Net household saving (B8) / [Net adjusted household disposable income (B7) + Adjustment for the change in equity of households on pension funds (D8)]

Table 3 provides household saving ratios for member countries using this definition and using data from the OECD annual SNA93 database.

Table 4 shows the differences between this measure and the current measure for the household saving ratio shown in Table 2.

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Proposed definition for the household saving ratio

Recommendation 4: The household saving ratio for inclusion in OECD Statistical Databases (including Annex Table 24 of the OECD Economic Outlook) should be defined as follows:

Net household saving (B8) / [Net adjusted household disposable income (B7) + Adjustment for the change in equity of households on pension funds (D8)]

The ratio should be calculated including NPISH for the present.

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Proposed definition for the household saving ratio (cont)

It is also recommended that countries publish this measure of household saving in their own national accounts publications in addition to the traditional measure.

Question: Are those countries that publish quarterly household saving ratios able to provide estimates for individual consumption for general government on a quarterly basis?

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Adjustments to the household saving ratio

Capital gains taxes Direct taxes versus taxes on production and imports Real net interest payments for households Household durables Potential and realised capital gains/losses Other issues regarding pensions Treatment of unincorporated enterprises Financial accounts measure

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Adjustments to the household saving ratio (cont)

Statistics Directorate is working towards alternative saving measures

Need to recognise the limitations of some of the proposed adjustments since it cannot be assumed that the economic behaviour of households would be unaffected if different institutional arrangements actually existed in particular countries.

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Capital gains taxes

Proposed adjustment– Treat capital gains taxes as capital transfers rather than

current transfers– Add back capital gains taxes to household saving and

household disposable income OECD paper to be discussed under agenda item 29

– Seems unlikely that a change in SNA93 will be recommended to the ISWGNA

Item for capital gains taxes added to Table 900

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Direct taxes versus taxes on production and imports

Saving is not affected by the mix of these taxes but household disposable income is

How adjust?– Replace taxes on production etc by income taxes– Replace income taxes by taxes on production etc– Use a standard mix of taxes for all countries

Suggest the first of these alternatives– Deduct taxes on production etc from HDI

Issues– Taxes on production etc or taxes on products?– Net of subsidies?

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Direct taxes versus taxes on production and imports (cont)

Issues (cont)– How much is attributable to actual final consumption?– Some of the production taxes could be replaced by income

taxes on corporations rather than all on households Difficult to estimate what part of taxes on production

is attributable to actual final consumption No reason to ignore subsidies Therefore, propose using taxes on products less

subsidies on products as a rough approximation Table 5 (adjusted ratios) and Table 6 (differences)

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Real net interest payments for households

Adjustment for the effect of inflation on interest rates and interest flows

Neutral interest Real interest = Nominal interest - neutral interest Only include real interest flows when deriving

household saving and HDI, therefore need to– Deduct neutral interest on assets– Add neutral interest on liabilities

Assets used for adjustment should include assets held on households behalf by pension funds, life insurance corporations and mutual funds etc

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Household durables

Households regard consumer durables as assets Rental equivalence approach could be used to derive

alternative estimates in satellite accounts– However, rental markets for long term use of consumer

durables may not be well developed– Therefore, if we assume no operating surplus is generated

from consumer durables an approximate adjustment is to subtract expenditure on durables from, and add consumption of fixed capital on durables to, HFCE

– Consequently, household saving would be increased by net investment in consumer durables

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Household durables (cont)

OECD and Eurostat are discussing proposals for additional data collection regarding household durables and dwellings– COFC for household durables, Capital stock for dwellings

and household durables, Capital gains/losses on dwellings

Recommendation 5: Countries are encouraged to compile separate estimates of household final consumption expenditure, capital stock and consumption of fixed capital for consumer durables.

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Capital gains and losses

Have a significant impact on wealth and consumption of households but are not included in household income in SNA93

Potential versus realised capital gains– Different impact on consumption than income from

production or transfers– Impact may be different for realised as opposed to potential

capital gains– Nominal or real capital gains?

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Capital gains and losses (cont)

Recommendation 6: Rather than adjusting the household saving ratio for capital gains/losses directly, it is recommended that capital gains/losses be used as an additional explanatory variable when analysing household consumption behaviour.

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Pensions

Defined benefit schemes– Problem of under or over funding

Unfunded pension schemes– Actual pensions do not match accruing liabilities for these

schemes Social security versus private pension schemes

– Different institutional arrangements contribute to observed differences in household saving ratios

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Pensions

Recommendation 7: It is recommended that adjustments in relation to social security schemes should be undertaken as a special exercise and not combined with other adjustments to derive an alternative measure of the household saving ratio.

The pensions EDG sponsored by the IMF provides an opportunity to resolve the problems caused by defined benefit schemes and unfunded pension schemes for public sector employees in the context of the forthcoming revision of SNA93. Anne Harrison’s paper on the pensions EDG makes a valuable contribution concerning this issue.

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Unincorporated enterprises

For which countries are unincorporated enterprises that are treated as quasi-corporate quantitatively significant?

Do such countries compile estimates for compensation of employees for working proprietors in quasi-corporations or is the labour return to these working proprietors included in operating surplus?

Do such countries have separate data on the level of withdrawals from quasi-corporations or do they simply assume that all of the entrepreneurial income of quasi-corporations is transferred to households in the current period?

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Financial accounts measure

Change in financial position (financial account) versus Net lending (capital account)

If all of the difference is assumed to be caused by deficiencies in income flows then can derive the following alternative measure of the household saving ratio– Table 7 gives these ratios, and

– Table 8 shows the difference between these ratios and those in Table 2.

Obviously the differences could be caused by deficiencies in any of the items in the income, capital or financial accounts

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Additional measures for the household saving ratio

An alternative measure or a series of alternative measures?

Do countries have a preference for whether a series of saving ratios should be compiled, each including an adjustment for one factor or whether a single alternative measure should be compiled that includes adjustments for all (or as many as possible) of the various factors simultaneously?

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Profit ratios

Country practices Types of profit ratios Definitions

– Gross or net?– Numerator– Denominator for rates of return– Denominator for profit share

Institutional sector scope

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Country practices

Profit ratios are presented in many different ways by member countries– United Kingdom

• Gross balance of primary incomes for non-financial corporations as a share of gross national income

• Economic Trends article containing data for 34 countries for net operating surplus over net capital stock plus inventories for non-financial corporations

– United States• 8 ratios; 4 rate of return measures and 4 profit share measures

• Ratios relate to private non-financial corporations

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Country practices (cont)

– United States (cont)• Net operating surplus and net entrepreneurial income are used

both before and after income tax as the numerator for each type of measure (Note: Different terminology is used by BEA)

• Net capital stock plus inventories is used as the denominator for rate of return measures

• Net factor income less NOS for public corporations is used as the denominator for profit share measures

– Australia• Gross operating surplus for financial and non-financial

corporations divided by total factor income

– France• GOS/Gross value added at basic prices for all enterprises

(corporate and quasi-corporate plus unincorporated)

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Types of profit ratios

Rates of return– Profit over capital stock– Used for profitability studies

Profit shares– Profit over GDP, GNI or total factor income– Used for analyses of returns to labour and capital

Profit margin– Profit over output– Not recommended at the macro economy level

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Definitions for rate of return and profit share measures

Gross or net– Both numerator and denominator should be net of

consumption of fixed capital– Use gross measure if consumption of fixed capital estimates

are deficient Numerator (for both rates of return and profit shares)

– Net operating surplus• Independent of the extent to which borrowed funds are used

– Entrepreneurial income• After receipts of property income and payments of interest and

rent on non-produced assets used by the business

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Definitions for rate of return and profit share measures (cont)

Denominator for rate of return measures– Net capital stock for produced assets– Including inventories?– Non-produced tangible assets?– Non-produced intangible assets?

Denominator for profit share measures– Net domestic product– Net factor income

• Whole economy

• Institutional sector used for numerator

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Institutional sector scope

Non-financial corporations Financial corporations Financial and non-financial corporations Corporations and unincorporated enterprises

– Ideally mixed income should be split into a return to the labour provided by working proprietors and a return to capital

Private and public sub-sectors for corporations

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Recommendations regarding profit ratios

Profit margin type ratios using output as the denominator should not be compiled at the macro economy level.

Rates of return and profit shares should be calculated net of consumption of fixed capital, unless COFC estimates are seriously deficient.

Net operating surplus should be used as the numerator if rates of return are being calculated at an industry level.

Otherwise, net operating surplus or entrepreneurial income may be used as the numerator for both rates of return and profit share measures.

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Recommendations regarding profit ratios (cont)

For rate of return measures the net capital stock should be defined to include produced assets and inventories.

For profit share measures various ratios may be calculated depending on the analyses being undertaken.

If a pure profit share measure is required, the variables in both the numerator and denominator should relate to the institutional sector(s) for which the ratio is being calculated.

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Recommendations regarding profit ratios (cont)

Recommendation 8: The ratio of net operating surplus divided by net factor income for the non-financial corporations sector should be one of the profit share ratios included in OECD Statistical Databases (including the Statistical Annex of the OECD Economic Outlook). Other profit share ratios should also be considered for inclusion.

Table 9 provides profit share ratios for non-financial corporations using data from the OECD annual SNA93 database

Country views are welcome on the most appropriate profit ratios for inclusion in OECD Statistical Databases (including the Statistical Annex to the Economic Outlook)