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.
“Cooper”25 pages
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 Table 14 SPIOER and I-O GVO: Comparisons of Average Annual Growth Rates Percent 1960-66 1967-72 Deflated 1-O Values Revised SPIOER Deflated I-O Values SPIOER Revised Metallurgy 7.4 7.5 5.2 5.1 Fuels 4.2 5.9 7.2 4.8 Electric power 11.6 10.7 8.5 7.9 Machinery 17.0 7.0 10.5 7.4 Chemicals and petrochemicals 12.0 10.9 11.2 8.0 Wood, pulp, and paper 3.8 2.3 5.8 3.3 Construction materials 7.7 7.3 6.8 5.7 Light industry 5.9 3.6 7.2 5.2 Processed food 5.4 5.4 5.7 5.2 In 15 of the 18 comparisons in table 14, the SPIOER growth rate is less than the growth of deflated GVO from the input-output tables; in one case the rates are equal and in only two instances are SPIOER rates greater. The lower SPIOER rate is consistent with our under- standing of Soviet price indexes. Because official price indexes do not capture all of the real price inflation, deflation of GVOs in the input-output tables by the official price series does not remove all of the price inflation from measured real growth. We would there- fore expect SPIOER growth rates to be below those derived from input-output GVOs, as they generally are. While this does not prove that the sample is representative of all industrial output, it does suggest that any sampling errors are likely to produce a lower growth rate rather than a higher one. This is comfort- ing because the greatest threats to measurement errors are likely in the opposite direction. (See the following discussion in “Biases in the Quantity and Value Data.”) Biases in the Basic Data Changes in the Material Intensity of Production. Only the 1972 input-output table is used in the SPIOER computations to estimate the output indexes for the branches of industry. This practice implicitly assumes that the ratio of value added to gross output for each sector remains approximately constant over the period. If this assumption is wildly unrealistic, the SPIOER indexes would fail to move in a manner representative of the movement of national industrial output. To avoid this strong assumption, one would need a highly disaggregated input-output table for every year, although only three——for 1959, 1966, and l972—have been compiled thus far. Even these three tables cannot be easily used together because SPIOER is a constant price index and the input- output tables are in current rubles. Fortunately this work already has been partly done on a limited basis for 18 sectors in two companion studies by Vladimir Treml and Gene Guill.” By using these constant price tables for the three benchmark years— 1959, 1966, and 1972—it becomes possible to com- pare movements in gross output and value added. The “ See Vladimir G. Treml, Price Indexesfor Soviet I8-Sector Input- Output Tables for I 959-I 975, Technical Note SSC-TN-5943-1, (Arlington, Virginia: SRI International, June 1978), for a deriva- tion of the price indexes. Also see Gene D. Guill, Deflation of the I8 Sector Soviet Input-Output Tables, Technical Note SSC-TN- 5943-4, (Arlington, Virginia: SR1 International, August 1978), for the derivation of input-output tables for several years in 1970 producer prices. 210 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.