Net output is an accounting concept used in national accounts such as the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA) and the NIPAs, and sometimes in corporate or government accounts. The concept was originally invented to measure the total net addition to a country's stock of wealth created by production during an accounting interval. The concept of net output is basically "gross revenue from production less the value of goods and services used up in that production". The idea is that if one deducts intermediate expenditures from the annual flow of income generated by production, one obtains a measure of the net new value in the new products created.
In national accounts, net output is equivalent to the gross value added during an accounting period when producing enterprises use inputs (labor and capital assets) to produce outputs. Gross value added is called "gross" because it includes[clarification needed] depreciation charges or consumption of fixed capital. The calculation is importantly influenced by the definition of expenditures and incomes included within the scope of "production" - some incomes and expenditures are included as "factor income" or "factor expenditure" directly related to production, other are not.
The calculation involves an accounting procedure of "grossing and netting" the revenues which enterprises obtain from their outputs of goods and services, in order to establish what the real value of those outputs is.
This procedure must consistently identify and distinguish between costs and revenues, and between materials or services used up, fixed assets and new outputs, according to a standard valuation. In national accounts, this is especially important because the inputs of one enterprise are the outputs of another, and vice versa; lacking a consistent procedure, double counting would result. In turn, the "grossing and netting" procedure assumes a value theory and a definition of the coverage of production. Once we have that, we can aggregate a multitude of prices to obtain a price for the total value of net output.
Components of net output
The value of an aggregate net output is normally understood to be equal to the sum of
In calculating net output for national accounts, government subsidies received by producing enterprises are normally subtracted from indirect tax levies paid by them during the same accounting period.
Net output and GDP
The total net output of resident producers in a national economy is equal to Gross Domestic Product or GDP. Included in this total is the productive activity of government agencies and certain income-generating activities of households.
Usually the term "net output" is used to refer to the contribution which a particular economic sector (for example, agriculture, manufacturing, business services etc.) makes to total value added or GDP during a quarter or a year.
The net output of a particular industry should not however be confused with the total value of its outputs, since in reality that total value includes the value-added by production plus the value of inputs used up (i.e. intermediate consumption) in producing the total value of outputs. For example, in making a car, a car factory adds value to the materials and components used to make the car. But the value of the finished car doesn't just include that value-added in production, but also the materials and ancillary operating costs used to make the car. Thus, if we want to know the total sale value of the output of the car factory, the relevant measure is not the "net output" (the value-added), but rather the gross output. If, for example, we wanted to calculate a "unit labour-cost" for the output value of the cars, the appropriate ratio is between labour costs and the gross output value of the cars. It follows that the total new net output value of a whole country, after deducting the value of goods and services used up from the gross expenditure or gross sales revenue, is a different concept from the net output of a particular industry.
Input-output analysis
In input-output analysis, disaggregated data on gross and net outputs of different economic sectors and sub-sectors is used to study the transactions between them. Thus, for example, a sector purchases inputs from several other sectors and sells outputs to several other sectors. By identifying the quantities of inputs and outputs involved, we can estimate what the effect will be of fluctuations in business activity within one sector, or group of sectors on the economy as a whole.
Criticism
As mentioned, the calculation of net output requires a value theory, a way of grossing and netting, and techniques for aggregating the prices of transaction volumes in a consistent way. Obviously, there are many different ways of going about this, but normally a legal framework limits the number of variations possible or permitted (business accounts have to be audited and so on, to guarantee a fair statement of business operations within the law of the land). Nevertheless, the procedure for establishing net output can be contested.
The valuation standards applied may be contested and differ somewhat between different countries.
In Marxian economics, the value product is offered as an alternative output measure, reflecting the new value produced by living labor.
But there is also an ecological criticism that is sometimes made. The argument here is that, in calculating net output, costs and results are only assessed in price terms. Therefore, inputs to production and outputs which are not priced, are excluded in the valuation. Yet those inputs and outputs may nevertheless have an economic or human value, regardless of whether a price could be imputed to them or regardless of whether they can be made an object of trade. If the air is polluted, or depletion of fish stocks in the open seas occurs, the cost of repairing that is not accounted for in the net output of polluters or fishing companies. Sometimes tax levies are therefore imposed. Nowadays the Kyoto protocol has inspired "emissions trading", where the right to pollute is bought and sold, which some regard as a strictly perverse activity. Others however argue it proves the ability of competitive markets to solve any problem of resource allocation.
Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold in a specific time period by a country or countries, generally "without double counting the intermediate goods and services used up to produce them". GDP is most often used by the government of a single country to measure its economic health. Due to its complex and subjective nature, this measure is often revised before being considered a reliable indicator. GDP (nominal) per capita does not, however, reflect differences in the cost of living and the inflation rates of the countries; therefore, using a basis of GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) may be more useful when comparing living standards between nations, while nominal GDP is more useful comparing national economies on the international market. Total GDP can also be broken down into the contribution of each industry or sector of the economy. The ratio of GDP to the total population of the region is the per capita GDP.
A variety of measures of national income and output are used in economics to estimate total economic activity in a country or region, including gross domestic product (GDP), gross national product (GNP), net national income (NNI), and adjusted national income. All are specially concerned with counting the total amount of goods and services produced within the economy and by various sectors. The boundary is usually defined by geography or citizenship, and it is also defined as the total income of the nation and also restrict the goods and services that are counted. For instance, some measures count only goods & services that are exchanged for money, excluding bartered goods, while other measures may attempt to include bartered goods by imputing monetary values to them.
The organic composition of capital (OCC) is a concept created by Karl Marx in his theory of capitalism, which was simultaneously his critique of the political economy of his time. It is derived from his more basic concepts of 'value composition of capital' and 'technical composition of capital'. Marx defines the organic composition of capital as "the value-composition of capital, in so far as it is determined by its technical composition and mirrors the changes of the latter". The 'technical composition of capital' measures the relation between the elements of constant capital and variable capital. It is 'technical' because no valuation is here involved. In contrast, the 'value composition of capital' is the ratio between the value of the elements of constant capital involved in production and the value of the labor. Marx found that the special concept of 'organic composition of capital' was sometimes useful in analysis, since it assumes that the relative values of all the elements of capital are constant.
Output in economics is the "quantity of goods or services produced in a given time period, by a firm, industry, or country", whether consumed or used for further production. The concept of national output is essential in the field of macroeconomics. It is national output that makes a country rich, not large amounts of money.
The national income and product accounts (NIPA) are part of the national accounts of the United States. They are produced by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Department of Commerce. They are one of the main sources of data on general economic activity in the United States.
In business, total value added is calculated by tabulating the unit value added per each unit of product sold. Thus, total value added is equivalent to revenue minus intermediate consumption. Value added is a higher portion of revenue for integrated companies and a lower portion of revenue for less integrated companies ; total value added is very closely approximated by compensation of employees, which represents a return to labor, plus earnings before taxes, representative of a return to capital.
National accounts or national account systems (NAS) are the implementation of complete and consistent accounting techniques for measuring the economic activity of a nation. These include detailed underlying measures that rely on double-entry accounting. By design, such accounting makes the totals on both sides of an account equal even though they each measure different characteristics, for example production and the income from it. As a method, the subject is termed national accounting or, more generally, social accounting. Stated otherwise, national accounts as systems may be distinguished from the economic data associated with those systems. While sharing many common principles with business accounting, national accounts are based on economic concepts. One conceptual construct for representing flows of all economic transactions that take place in an economy is a social accounting matrix with accounts in each respective row-column entry.
Consumption of fixed capital (CFC) is a term used in business accounts, tax assessments and national accounts for depreciation of fixed assets. CFC is used in preference to "depreciation" to emphasize that fixed capital is used up in the process of generating new output, and because unlike depreciation it is not valued at historic cost but at current market value ; CFC may also include other expenses incurred in using or installing fixed assets beyond actual depreciation charges. Normally the term applies only to producing enterprises, but sometimes it applies also to real estate assets.
(GFCF) is a macroeconomic concept used in official national accounts such as the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA), National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) and the European System of Accounts (ESA). The concept dates back to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) studies of Simon Kuznets of capital formation in the 1930s, and standard measures for it were adopted in the 1950s. Statistically it measures the value of acquisitions of new or existing fixed assets by the business sector, governments and "pure" households less disposals of fixed assets.
is a component of the expenditure on gross domestic product (GDP), and thus shows something about how much of the new value added in the economy is invested rather than consumed.
The value product (VP) is an economic concept formulated by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy during the 1860s, and used in Marxian social accounting theory for capitalist economies. Its annual monetary value is approximately equal to the netted sum of six flows of income generated by production:
Productive and unproductive labour are concepts that were used in classical political economy mainly in the 18th and 19th centuries, which survive today to some extent in modern management discussions, economic sociology and Marxist or Marxian economic analysis. The concepts strongly influenced the construction of national accounts in the Soviet Union and other Soviet-type societies.
Intermediate consumption is an economic concept used in national accounts, such as the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA), the US National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) and the European System of Accounts (ESA).
Compensation of employees (CE) is a statistical term used in national accounts, balance of payments statistics and sometimes in corporate accounts as well. It refers basically to the total gross (pre-tax) wages paid by employers to employees for work done in an accounting period, such as a quarter or a year.
Operating surplus is an accounting concept used in national accounts statistics and in corporate and government accounts. It is the balancing item of the Generation of Income Account in the UNSNA. It may be used in macro-economics as a proxy for total pre-tax profit income, although entrepreneurial income may provide a better measure of business profits. According to the 2008 SNA, it is the measure of the surplus accruing from production before deducting property income, e.g., land rent and interest.
Capital formation is a concept used in macroeconomics, national accounts and financial economics. Occasionally it is also used in corporate accounts. It can be defined in three ways:
Double counting in accounting is an error whereby a transaction is counted more than once, for whatever reason. But in social accounting it also refers to a conceptual problem in social accounting practice, when the attempt is made to estimate the new value added by Gross Output, or the value of total investments.
In economics, gross value added (GVA) is the measure of the value of goods and services produced in an area, industry or sector of an economy. "Gross value added is the value of output minus the value of intermediate consumption; it is a measure of the contribution to GDP made by an individual producer, industry or sector; gross value added is the source from which the primary incomes of the System of National Accounts (SNA) are generated and is therefore carried forward into the primary distribution of income account."
Net Material Product (NMP) was the main macroeconomic indicator used for monitoring growth in national accounts of socialist countries during the Soviet era. These countries included the USSR and all the Comecon members. NMP is the conceptual equivalent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the United Nations System of National Accounts, although numerically the two measures are calculated differently.
The annual United Kingdom National Accounts records and describes economic activity in the United Kingdom and as such is used by government, banks, academics and industries to formulate the economic and social policies and monitor the economic progress of the United Kingdom. It also allows international comparisons to be made. The Blue Book is published by the UK Office for National Statistics alongside the United Kingdom Balance of Payments – The Pink Book.
In Marxian economics, surplus value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cost of the materials, plant and labour power. The concept originated in Ricardian socialism, with the term "surplus value" itself being coined by William Thompson in 1824; however, it was not consistently distinguished from the related concepts of surplus labor and surplus product. The concept was subsequently developed and popularized by Karl Marx. Marx's formulation is the standard sense and the primary basis for further developments, though how much of Marx's concept is original and distinct from the Ricardian concept is disputed. Marx's term is the German word "Mehrwert", which simply means value added, and is cognate to English "more worth".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
