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.
“V.M.”23 pages
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 adjustments such as those using ruble-dollar conver- sion ratios are made to compensate for the lower quality of Soviet output.” Lack of quality comparability probably poses less of a problem for comparisons of growth of agricultural output than it does for comparisons of levels of output. Growth comparisons are affected, however,’ if non- comparable Western and Soviet data are used to construct price weights and component indexes of overall indexes of farm output. If relative prices for agricultural products in both countries do not reflect production tradeoffs (marginal rates of transforma- tion), then the validity of growth comparisons is reduced. For example, farm-gate prices in the US index of agricultural production probably measure marginal rates of transformation reasonably well; Soviet prices, however, are set by the government with little consideration of actual costs. In a US-USSR comparison, however, the effect of these deficiencies in Soviet prices on growth comparisons is small." Of course, relative prices can shift over time with the result that growth comparisons would vary depending on the base year chosen for indexes of output. The relatively broader coverage of Soviet agricultural statistics on meat production is another example affecting weights and therefore comparisons of growth. Soviet statistics include meat from rabbits, horses, deer, camels, and so on, which few Western countries include. In a US-USSR comparison Soviet meat output is not seriously overstated because these quantities are small in the USSR and even smaller in the United States. A more serious source of difference in the weights is the inclusion of edible offal and ’° US-USSR comparisons of agricultural output are discussed in Douglas Whitehouse and Joseph F. Havelka, “Comparison of Farm Output in the US and the USSR, 1950-1971,” Soviet Economic Prospects for the Seventies, Joint Economic Committee, US Con- gress, Washington, D. C., 1973, p. 340. " To test the effect on the index of deficiencies in Soviet prices, we substituted cost of production figures in 1970 (sebestoimosf from Selkhoz I971) for 1970 average realized prices. The substitution slowed growth in crop production by one tenth of one percent. Livestock output growth accelerated by two tenths of one percent for the 1951-78 period as a whole. While official Soviet cost data have major deficiencies (for example, a return on land and interest charges on capital are not included) they are probably closer to marginal rates of transformation than average realized prices. slaughter fat in Soviet meat production. The Soviet definition of slaughter weight includes internal and subcutaneous fat which, for example, can add 10 percent or more to the weight of a beef carcass.” Without some adjustment, the structure of Soviet agricultural output would give meat production too heavy a weight relative to the weight of meat in the US output. For comparisons therefore, meat output in both countries is measured on a liveweight basis to improve comparability of definitions. Growth comparisons are also affected by changes in product quality over time. An index based on physical production understates real growth in output if qual- ity has improved simultaneously. International com- parisons of growth in agricultural output assume constant quality although the assumption may be unwarranted. Evidence suggests some improvement in the quality of Soviet livestock products, especially beef, between 1950 and 1978. Soviet meat animals have more meat on the bone than formerly, and the quality of milk and eggs has improved somewhat. Furthermore, the oil content of sunflower seed has risen. In theory, indexes of output of these commod- ities could be adjusted for quality to improve growth comparisons, although such an adjustment would be difficult to construct in practice. In the case of US- USSR comparisons of growth over time, the bias introduced by shifting quality probably is small be- cause improvement in quality of US products, par- ticularly pork, has also occurred. V. Deductions for Waste. A. The Nature of the Problem Soviet gross output statistics for many agricultural commodities are inflated by waste." Grain output statistics, for example, measure the harvest prior to any cleaning and drying. In the USSR, grain harvest- ing procedures and weather patterns tend to result in unusual amounts of extraneous matter being included in gross output. Excess moisture, damaged kernels, ~ ” Sel'sk0kh0zyaystvennaya entsiklopediya, Vol. I, Moscow, 1969, p. 693. ” See footnote 24. " 266 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.