Provincial Economic Accounts

Detailed information for 2003

Status:

Active

Frequency:

Annual

Record number:

1902

The Provincial Economic Accounts program produces annual estimates of selected aggregates of the Income and Expenditure Accounts by province and territory: gross domestic product, final domestic demand, personal income and government sector accounts.

Data release - April 28, 2004 (preliminary estimates; revised data were released on November 9, 2004)

Description

The Provincial Economic Accounts program produces annual estimates of selected aggregates of the Income and Expenditure Accounts by province and territory: gross domestic product, final domestic demand, personal income and government sector accounts.

The data are used in macroeconomic analysis and forecasting, for policy analysis and for econometric modelling and hypothesis testing by federal and provincial government officials, business people, academic economists and international organizations.

For a more complete, though brief, description, please refer to the document entitled "Overview of the Provincial Economic Accounts" available in the "Documentation" section located at the end of the detailed information for this survey.

Statistical activity

The Canadian System of National Accounts (CSNA) provides a conceptually integrated statistical framework for studying the state and behavior of the Canadian economy. The accounts are centered on the measurement of activities associated with the production of goods and services, the sales of goods and services in final markets, the supporting financial transactions, and the resulting wealth positions.

To produce financial statistics, the CSNA measures the economic dimensions of the public sector of Canada, including the financial inter-relationships among the thousands of entities that make up the three levels of government in Canada (federal, provincial and territorial, and local). In order to carry out this program, the CSNA maintains a universe of all public sector entities including their complex inter-relationships.

Provincial and territorial accounts - The System of National Economic Accounts disseminates a wide variety of data at the provincial and territorial level on topics such as the environment, government finance, gross domestic product (GDP) and its components, GDP by industry, tourism and labour productivity.

Subjects

  • Economic accounts
  • Gross domestic product
  • Income and expenditure accounts

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The Canadian economy (persons and unincorporated business, corporations, governments and non-residents).

Instrument design

This methodology does not apply.

Sampling

This methodology does not apply.

Data sources

Data are extracted from administrative files and derived from other Statistics Canada surveys and/or other sources.

The Provincial Economic Accounts (PEA) provide a measure of macroeconomic activity on an annual basis, as represented by income and expenditure-based GDP, and rely heavily on a wealth of information from various areas of Statistics Canada. A large amount of information from various survey divisions within the bureau, along with other data, is compiled, integrated and analysed as part of the complex process of arriving at provincial GDP's and their component categories and underlying sector accounts.

Major suppliers of data within Statistics Canada include: Agriculture Division, Investment and Capital Stock Division, Income Statistics Division, International Trade Division, Distributive Trades Division, Manufacturing, Construction and Energy Division, Industrial Organization and Finance Division, Labour Division, Prices Division, Public Institutions Division, and Tax Data Division. Numerous external and administrative sources of data are also used.

Error detection

This methodology type does not apply to this statistical program.

Imputation

This methodology does not apply.

Estimation

The Provincial Economic Accounts measure the unduplicated value of production in two separate ways. The first simply sums all of the factor incomes (wages and salaries, and profits) generated by this productive activity - incomes representing the returns to the labour and capital employed. The second approach sums all sales which firms have made to final users - to consumers, to governments, to business on capital account, or in export markets. This approach also provides an unduplicated value of total production. Imports, of course, have to be deducted from this summation since they are implicitly included in these final sales and should not be counted as a part of indigenous production - they represent part of the exogenous production. Sales from one firm to another (intermediate production) are not counted since to do so would involve double counting, all intermediate production being embodied in final output sold to users. This 'sales to final users' (or 'sum of expenditures') approach yields the same value of production as the 'sum of incomes' approach. After the initial estimates income and expenditure - side GDP are produced, the discrepancy is assessed.

Real GDP is only calculated in terms of expenditure as the components of the income-based GDP cannot be split between a quantity value and a price value. Therefore, there is no indicator enabling us to remove the effect of inflation to calculate real values for the income-based GDP components. This is why only the components that are part of the GDP by expenditures are calculated in real terms.

Quality evaluation

Data are analysed for time series consistency, links to current economic events, issues arising from the source data, and with respect with coherence. As well, the discrepancy between the estimates of income and expenditure-side GDP is assessed.

It is not possible to produce an equivalent to Provincial Economic Accounts, as measured in terms of income and expenditures except at the aggregate level. At the level of GDP, the unduplicated value of production can also be measured by taking the gross value of production of each firm and subtracting each firm's intermediate inputs in the form of its purchases from other firms (including imports) to yield the 'net value added' to production by the firm. Estimates of this type are produced in the provincial Input-Output tables, as well as in the industry-based estimates of GDP by province. Real GDP estimates can then be compared with the results of the provincial GDP by Industry program. Annually, the provincial income and expenditure data are benchmarked to the Input-Output Accounts.

Certain components of income and expenditure-based GDP can be obtained in survey divisions, but typically the data are not directly comparable. For example, the variable "corporate profits" is published in the Quarterly Financial Statistics release, but it differs from the income-based GDP measure due to certain national accounts' concept adjustments. Also, the national estimates have to be allocated by province and by territory to reflect where the activity took place rather than where the head office is located.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects that could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.

In order to prevent any data disclosure, confidentiality analysis is done using the Statistics Canada Generalized Disclosure Control System (G-Confid). G-Confid is used for primary suppression (direct disclosure) as well as for secondary suppression (residual disclosure). Direct disclosure occurs when the value in a tabulation cell is composed of or dominated by few enterprises while residual disclosure occurs when confidential information can be derived indirectly by piecing together information from different sources or data series.

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

Revisions - Preliminary estimates are released in the spring following the end of the reference period, and revised in the fall of the same year. This latter release also comprises revisions to the three previous years. Estimates are not normally revised again except when historical revisions are carried out, usually once per decade. Statistical revisions are carried out in order to incorporate the most recent information from surveys, taxation statistics, public accounts, censuses, etc., as well as from the annual benchmarking process of the Input-Output Accounts.

Seasonal adjustment - Almost all series of the quarterly PEA are seasonally-adjusted. Seasonal adjustment is generally made at the lowest level of aggregation, and seasonally-adjusted aggregates are obtained by summation. Statistics Canada's X-11 ARIMA is used to seasonally adjust series.

Data accuracy

The accounts are designed as a double-entry system in which the income- and expenditure-based GDP totals should, in principle, be identical. In fact, a difference virtually always arises between them due to errors in the source data, imperfect estimation techniques, differing seasonal adjustment methods and discrepancies in the time at which the incomes and expenditures are recorded.

The size of the discrepancy, which stems from the estimation procedure, is one gauge of the system's overall reliability. However, it is a partial and quite insufficient gauge. Another quality measure is how well real expenditure-side GDP compares to the real GDP by Industry measure.

No direct measures of the margin of error in the estimates can be calculated. The quality of the estimates can be inferred from analysis of revisions and from a subjective assessment of the data sources and methodology used in the preparation of the estimates.

Documentation

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