A Balanced System of Industry Accounts for the U.S. and Structural Distribution of Statistical Discrepancy

This paper describes and illustrates a generalized least squares (GLS) reconciliation method that can efficiently incorporate all available information on initial data in reconciling a large system of disaggregated accounts and can accurately estimate industry distribution of statistical discrepancy. The GLS reconciliation method is applied to reconciling the 1997 GDP-by-industry accounts and the Input-output accounts. The GDP-by-industry accounts measure GDP by industry using industry gross income, and the input-output accounts measure GDP by industry as the residual between gross output and intermediate inputs. The GLS method produced balanced estimates and estimated the industry distribution of the statistical discrepancy. The results show that using reliability to reconcile different accounts produces statistically meaningful balanced estimates. The study demonstrates that reconciling a large system of disaggregated accounts is empirically feasible and computationally efficient.