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 Indexes require modification to correct for distortions in So- The indexes of total consumption and major compo- viet prices, which fail to reflect either full resource nents provide, it is believed, a reasonably reliable costs (production potential) or consumers’ marginal measure of the growth of real consumption in the utilities as they would be expressed in a free market. USSR since 1950. Because the index is designed to Where the concern is with production potential (and measure as closely as possible real consumption of perhaps also with welfare in terms of planners’ prefer- goods and services as measured in the West, this enees), ruble Dfioes need to be adjusted (ll to remove overall judgement lends confidence to international turnover taxes, now levied mainly on soft goods, l comparisons of relative progress in raising levels of durables and alooliolio beverages; (2) to add Subsidies. living in the USSR and in other countries. The index now applicable mainly to food and to housing; and (3) is also a better indicator of the growth of consumption to allow for a fesollfoe eliafge for Capital A faetof in the postwar period than are the Soviet official cost adjustment to 1970 ruble values has been made statistical series intended for that purpose, because for GNP and its end-Ilse Components-'7 For Consump- the index is more inclusive and because it largely tion the procedure resulted inia net reduction in total avoids the use of the unreliable official retail price consumption of 3-3 billion rubles, of l-6 Dement- indexes. Table 5 co\mpares the growth rate of consumption and its major components aggregated (l) with established The index is considered much more reliable for price weights and (2) with 1970 ruble factor cost depicting long-run trends than year-to-year changes. weights. The factor cost weights reduce the growth of lnaccuracy in measuring the latter stems from the total consumption by about one-tenth for the period as limitations of data availability. Absence of data for a whole because the adjustment Faises tlie Weight oi particular years necessitated interpolation in a num- the relatively slow-growing housing component and ber of cases, or resort to estimates based on a variety reduces the weight of the fast~growing durables com- of evidence in other cases. Also, use of production ponent. Also, the index of food, beverages, and tobac- data to represent some series may distort annual co grows more slowly when factor cost weights are changes in actual consumption, especially for agricul- Used, beeallse the iaotof eost adjustment raises the tural products; however, adjustments for inventory weight of the relatively slow-growing animal products change and net foreign trade were made where avail- sub-index and sharply reduces the weight of the very able data permitted doing so. fast growing index of beverages. Meat prices are' heavily subsidized, and alcoholic beverages are heav- The individual time series selected to measu_re con- ily mX¢d_ sumption of particular categories of goods and serv- ices necessarily were constrained by the availability of The adjustment ;¢du¢¢5 the Share of consumption in data. Every effort was made to scour the literature GNP in 1970 from 55_1 pgfcent to 54_2 p¢;c¢m_ The and to select or construct data series that seemed most gffeqts on relative; Shares of major cawgorics within suitable as measures of changes in real consumption Cgngumption in 1970 am Shown in Table 2_ over time. Some series are based on measures of ' production or of consumption expressed in physical Adjusggd Market Pfices Units (kilograms, square meters, kilowatt-hours and Bergson also considered the question of the extent to the like); Others are based On deflated retail Sales, which relative prices in consumer goods markets in while others are deflated government expenditures. the USSR conform to his "consumer utility Stan- The series are of uneven quality, a point that will be dard.” '8 For retail prices to reflect relative utilities in elaborated later for eaeh major Component indeX- the Soviet context, consumers must be free to dispose of money incomes as they choose and government price-fixing must succeed, by and large, in limiting Indexes at Factor Cost and in Adjusted Market Prices demand to Suppl;/_ Consumption in kind, in mm, should be valued at retail prices that reflect consumer Faetof Cost utilities. Similarly, housing rents should reflect the AS Bergson has shown.“ measures of Soviet e0nsumr>- levels that would obtain in an open market. tion in established prices (prevailing ruble prices) :1 Igor a description of the procedure, see JEC, GNP, I950-80. '~ Bergson, 1961, pp. 103-126. °"*‘°“~ lg“ PP- 157471 331 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.