Documents / FOIA release
This Joint Committee Print, dated December 8, 1982, gathers studies that the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Intelligence prepared for the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress. It gives estimates of Soviet gross national product for 1950 to 1980, with indexes of industrial production, agricultural production and consumption, and explains the methods and data behind them. The foreword says official Soviet statistics inflate growth and that the CIA measures offer a more accurate picture. The document contains no UFO material.
“Gross”60+ pages
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 The most common description is a statistical produc- tion series expressed in physical terms: tons, square meters, units of production, or some other convention- al measure. Examples of this type of data are tons of coal, square meters of tile, or number of subway cars. The product series are then multiplied by actual or estimated 1967 enterprise wholesale prices to derive constant price series. In some cases the raw product data are adjusted by indexes of quality change in the average or standard product over time. For example, not only has Portland cement production increased over time, but the output mix has steadily shifted in favor of higher “marks” (greater strength) of cement. Raw figures for Portland cement production are therefore weighted by both the 1967 wholesale price and an index of average mark to account for the improved quality of the product over time. Official ruble value series reported by the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR (CSA) are also used as sample elements. A few examples are the value of production of agricultural machinery, metal- cutting machine tools, and forge presses. Until recent- ly these series were reported in official 1967 wholesale prices, although earlier years were reported in 1955 wholesale prices. In 1976 the Soviets began to publish these value series in prices of 1 January 1975. The official statistics have overlap in the different prices for a given year to permit an approximate linkage between the earlier and later periods, so that a common price basis can be maintained. Since the physical output samples are weighted by 1 July 1967 prices, the new value indexes were linked backward to estimate them in 1967 prices to conform with the remainder of the sample. These rubles series, however, must be used with caution because many of them contain a large degree of concealed inflation. The products in this category are usually machinery items subject to the problems of new-product pricing. Some share of the reported growth arises from the use of first temporary prices and then permanent prices that are substantially higher than increased performance would justify.’ In addition, since these series include both intermediate and final goods, they contain a substantial amount of double-counting. To the extent that the magnitude of double-counting has fluctuated over time, these series could be biased up or down. The third kind of production measure consists of gross value of output (GVO) indexes prepared by the Soviets for various product groups such as mineral chemicals, repair of machinery, and metal structurals. They are supposed to represent the aggregation of all output in a given branch—sometimes including work in process and major repairs. These indexes are subject to even greater limitations than the CSA value series.‘ Therefore, they are used only to fill out the sample in some crucial areas where better indica- tors are lacking. Although each line item in the SPIOER sample ostensibly consists of a production entry for every year since 1950, the quality of coverage is not uniform. Some gaps in coverage exist for the earlier years, especially during the 1950s. These gaps fit three categories: missing intervening observations at irregu- lar intervals, series that begin several years after 1950 despite production during earlier years, and items not produced in earlier years. The extent of the resulting problems and procedures to circumvent them vary by type of gap. ’ See the section “Biases in the Basic Data” for a fuller treatment of the new-product pricing phenomenon. It has been widely discussed in the literature. In particular, see Abraham S. Becker, Ruble Price Levels and Dollar-Ruble Ratios of Soviet Machinery in the I 960s, Report R-1063-DDRE (Santa Monica, California, The Rand Cor- poration, 1973); Joseph S. Berliner, The Innovation Decision in Soviet Industry (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1976); Padma Desai, “On Reconstructing Price, Output and Value-Added Indexes in Postwar Soviet Industry and Its Branches,” Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics (February 1978): pp. 55-77; Central Intelligence Agency, An Analysis of the Behavior afSoviet Ma- chinery Prices, 1960-73, ER 79-10631 (December 1979); and James E. Steiner, Inflation in Soviet Industry and Machine Building and Metalworking (MBMW), I960-I975, SRM 78-1042 (Working pa- pezr, July 1978). ' As an index, the output data are expressed only as a proportion of another year. The publication of indexes with Qitferent base years and in extremely rounded form limits accuracy. In addition, an index cannot be scaled to compare its relative importance with activity elsewhere in the economy. 181 93-89? O - 82 — 13 Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 399 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.