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 years value added in each sector is computed by finding the ratio of the value for the sector index in each year to its value in 1972 and then multiplying this ratio by value added in I972 as derived from the input-output table. Finally, to obtain the branch indexes, every sector is first allocated to one of the 10 industrial branches. Then for each year the estimated value added for all of the sectors belonging to that branch are totaled. After totals for each branch are converted to indexes with base l970= 100, these branch indexes are equiv- alent to an aggregation of production indexes using value-added weights. This procedure entails at least four possible sources of error: ~ The samples for each sector may be unrepresenta- tive of actual gross output over time. - Value added may not move in the same way as gross output because the material intensiveness of produc- tion may have changed. - Value-added estimates for the sectors may be wrong because in the reconstruction of the 1972 input- output table they were derived as a residual, and thus are subject to all of the uncertainties that plague any residual. ¢ The price bases of the input-output table (1972 prices) and the product sample (I967 prices) are both different from the 1970 prices that should be used. These possible sources of error are discussed in detail below in the section, “Evaluation of the New Indexes.” The Machinery Index The machinery index has undergone substantial revi- sion since the methodology was last described in 1976. Revisions have focused on five areas: - More machinery sectors are represented in the producer durables indexes. - Passenger automobiles for private purchases and other consumer-oriented automotive products have been shifted from the producer durables to the consumer durables component of the machinery index. - Some sectors producing both consumer durables and producer durables have separate indexes to represent each component. ~ The Tovary series adjusted to deduct furniture production is no longer used as the sole measure of consumer durables." ' Finally, new weights for producer and consumer durables have been derived with the help of the 1972 input-output table. The machinery branch is handled differently because we want to disaggregate branch output according to how the machinery is used (figure 4). Since the use of value-added weights implies a production orientation and the different components of the machinery index are based on end use, the disaggregation is not easy. The first useful end-use distinction within machinery is between civilian machinery and military machinery. Here, military machinery excludes common-use dura- bles—products with both civilian and military appli- cations, such as trucks or bulldozers—because they are already reflected in production reported by the CSA. Since the USSR publishes no statistics on uniquely military machinery production, we rely on CIA estimates. A second useful distinction within the machinery branch is between producer durables and consumer durables, reflected only infrequently in Soviet statis- tics. Consumer durables output appears indirectly in the official Tovary time series. Although SPIOER formerly used this series as a proxy for consumer durables, it neither consists exclusively of consumer durables nor does it contain all consumer durables. For example, the Tovary series includes nondurables such as household chemicals, and may exclude the production of passenger cars destined for private purchase. Because reliable official data are not at hand to separate consumer durables from producer durables, we must use an alternative method. " The full title of this series is “production of commodities of cultural-everyday significance and household articles” (pr0iz- vodstvo tovarov kul 'turno-bytovogo naznacheniya i khozyaystvennogo abikhoda). Hereafter this series is referred to as Tovary. 188 Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421
Not linked to a story yet.
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.