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 whole. They are considered to be quite reliable. Seven of the indexes with 72 percent of the weight are based on production series, and the rest are based on deflated retail sales, using official retail price indexes. When possible, the indexes based on physical produc- tion data have been adjusted for net foreign trade and inventory change. Three of these indexes can be compared with indexes derived from official Soviet data on per capita consumption in physical units and with deflated retail sales. The comparisons are shown below (l950= I00). The CIA indexes agree quite well with those based on Soviet data on per capita consumption. Knitwear Hosiery » Leather Footwear Z __A 13 c A 13 c A 13 c 1960 314 214 443 224 204 358 206 206 31s 1975 vss 809 2,275 331 310 1,235 411 304 901 A—Index derived from Soviet per capita consumption data in physical units, including imports. B—CIA index. C—Indexes derived from official deflated retail sales. But both indexes grow much less rapidly than those based on officially deflated retail sales. No doubt, the physically based measures understate the real growth of consumption of these items because they do not take account of improvements in quality and product assortment. On the other hand, deflated retail sales indexes surely overstate real growth, since the price deflators are known to have a downward bias. There is no way to determine the degree of bias independently because there are no suitable price data. The index for clothing (sewn garments) with a third of the soft goods weight is based on official Soviet data on the value of production in so-called constant (1967) prices. It, too, increases much more slowly than the value of officially deflated retail sales: the respective indexes for 1975 (l950= 100) are 608 and 1048. Both indexes, as well as the others discussed above, overstate real growth of consumption to some extent because they do not take into account the shift from home production to factory manufacture. Although both deflated value indexes (production and retail sales) are believed to have unreliable deflators, that for retail sales is considered the least accurate. The comments about the reliability of official retail price indexes apply also to the 6 sub-indexes that are based on deflated retail sales. There are ,no alternative data to use in estimating consumption of these items. Because of the familiar faults of official price indexes, the indexes probably have an upward bias. One can hope, but not be certain that the various biases more or less cancel out. However, the composite index of consump- tion derived here clearly is preferable to a measure that relies entirely on official values and price deflators. The CIA indexes for clothing and related items, based on production, do not allow for imports, which come mainly from CEMA countries. Although imports rose rapidly during the 1950s, they were miniscule relative to the value of retail sales. During the 1960s, imports in current prices increased at about the same rate as the value of production in constant prices. Although imports in current prices increased faster than real production in the 1970s, prices of imports evidently increased rapidly also. From this evidence, it appears that the CIA index for clothing is not seriously biased downward by failure to allow for imports. Exports of clothing have been negligible throughout the period. Weights. The derivation of the 1970 expenditure ' weights for the soft goods index is shown in Table 9. Essentially, the task was to disaggregate the principal expenditure categories—retail sales for consumption and military subsistence. The allocation of retail sales to sub-groups can be made with confidence from published retail sales data and assumptions about the distribution of sales to enterprises and institutions. The distribution of the military clothing ration is tenuous but is probably not grossly wrong. Because their content is unknown, purchases of soft goods in collective farm markets, a small sum, were not distributed. The value of consumption in kind of wool was obtained by the methodology used to derive the total of such consumption and is thought to be reasonably reliable; the wool was assumed to be used to produce various items of knitted clothing. Indexes. The data underlying all sub-indexes are given in Appendix C. Six sub-indexes are based on physical production data available in Promyshlennost SSSR I964 and in annual Narkhozy. They include: knitted outerwear, knitted underwear, leather foot- wear, rubber footwear, felt footwear, and hosiery. The series for leather footwear was adjusted for net trade and inventory change—needed because of rapidly rising imports. These adjustments could not be made for the other categories; imports are known to be 340 Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 1
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 399 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.