National Income and Capital Formation

A NEW stage in the contributions of the National Bureau of Economic Research to a summary statistical statement of the operations of our national economy is represented in National Income and Capital Formation. This general volume has been supplemented by Volume XXXIV of the "National Bureau" series, Commodity Flow and Capital Formation, Volume I, containing the detailed statistics and the methodological notes and discussions basic to the estimates on these topics in the volume under review. Two additional supplemental volumes of a similar character-one on national income and the other dealing with capital consumption2-are yet to come. Thus, at the present time, the detailed processes which Dr. Kuznets has employed in arriving at his final estimates have been only partially explained. Nevertheless, it is clear that National Income and Capital Formation represents a long step forward in our quantitative understanding of economic activity in the United States. Perhaps the most important feature of this new over-all national financial statement is that it employs the concept of gross national products-a concept which is more inclusive than that of national income in that the cost of replacing worn-out items in the stock of certain types of durable wealth is included. For this total it is possible to break down the national product into the various kinds of ultimate products-commodities and services-which make it up. Dr. Kuznets provides us accordingly with estimates of gross and net capital formation, i.e., roughly speaking, of the gross and net additions to our stock of wealth. The total value of public works, of new business plant and equipment, of new housing constructed, and of consumers' durable