Nadim Ahmad

Defining Entrepreneurial Activity: Definitions Supporting Frameworks for Data Collection

This paper sets out definitions of the entrepreneur, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activity for the purpose of supporting the development of related indicators. The paper recognises the long history in this area and the contention and differences that have existed, and that continue to exist, between academics who have confronted this issue over the last two centuries. It deliberately adopts a more pragmatic approach based on two principles – relevance and measurability - resulting in definitions that are developed from both a bottom-up and top-down approach. Importantly, the definitions emphasise the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial activity and focus attention on action rather than intentions or supply/demand conditions. The paper concludes with an overview of policy implications arising from the definitions.

The OECD Input-Output Database

The development of the OECD?s input-output database started over a decade ago and is currently undergoing its second update. Over the years, the database has been used in a number of analytical applications both within and outside the OECD. Two major applications within the OECD concerned the analysis of the diffusion of embodied technology and, more recently, the measurement of carbon dioxide emissions embodied in the international trade of goods. The latest update is being conducted as part of an OECD project looking at global value chains. This paper describes how the database has developed over the last decade, both from a collection and a compilation...

Report of the OECD Task Force on Software Measurement in the National Accounts

This statistical working paper is the exact copy of the report of the joint OECD/Eurostat task force that was presented at the October 2002 OECD National Accounts Expert Meeting. The report confirms that current estimates of software investment differ significantly between countries for pure statistical reasons, thus affecting the comparability of GDP. The objective of this report is to propose concrete recommendations for a harmonised re-estimation of software investment in the national accounts. Recommendations cover definitional and conceptual issues (what is software?, what is software investment?), measurement issues in international trade and price, as well as general methods of estimation (sources and commodity-flow methods). The principle of the recommendations has been adopted by a large majority of OECD member countries during the October 2002 meeting. However, new estimates based on these recommendations should only be available in the forthcoming years, depending on the ... Ce document de travail statistique est l’exacte copie du rapport du groupe de travail special conjoint OCDE/Eurostat qui a ete presente a la reunion d’octobre 2002 des experts comptables nationaux de l’OCDE. Le rapport confirme que les estimations actuelles de l’investissement en logiciel different significativement entre pays purement du fait de raisons statistiques, affectant la comparabilite des PIB. L’objective du rapport est de proposer des recommandations concretes pour une re estimation harmonisee de l’investissement en logiciels dans les comptes nationaux. Les recommandations couvrent les questions conceptuelles et de definition (qu’est qu’un logiciel ? qu’est ce que l’investissement en logiciel ?), les questions de mesure en commerce international et en prix, ainsi que les methodes generales d’estimation (sources et equilibre emplois ressources du produit). Le principe de ces recommandations a ete approuve par une large majorite des pays membres de l’OCDE pendant la ...

Defining Entrepreneurial Activity

This paper sets out definitions of the entrepreneur, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activity for the purpose of supporting the development of related indicators. The paper recognises the long history in this area and the contention and differences that have existed, and that continue to exist, between academics who have confronted this issue over the last two centuries. It deliberately adopts a more pragmatic approach based on two principles ? relevance and measurability - resulting in definitions that are developed from both a bottom-up and top-down approach. Importantly, the definitions emphasise the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial activity and focus attention on action rather than intentions or supply/demand conditions. The paper concludes with an overview of policy implications arising from the definitions.

Trade in Value Added, Jobs and Investment

The increasing international fragmentation of production that has occurred in recent decades driven by technological progress, cost, access to resources and markets, trade policy reforms, and indeed emerging economies, has challenged our conventional wisdom on how we look at and interpret trade. Traditional measures of trade, record gross flows of goods and services each and every time they cross borders leading to what many describe as a ‘multiple’ counting of trade, which may lead to misguided policy measures. To respond to this challenge a number of initiatives have been launched in recent years that attempt to measure, or perhaps more accurately ‘estimate’, what has become known as ‘trade in value-added’. These have all helped to shed light on the importance of accounting for global value chains and have helped raise awareness of a growing need to mainstream the production of these estimates within the international statistics system. Responding to these challenges on 15 March 2012 the OECD and WTO undertook to collaborate on the development of estimates of trade in value-added (TiVA), resulting in a first release of a preliminary database on 16 January 2013 and a subsequent update in May 2013. This paper describes some of the key results of that work, and the methodology used. It also describes the detailed assumptions behind the methodology to necessarily deal with the treatment of data, and also the initiatives launched to improve the quality of those assumptions and the underlying data. The paper also describes extensions of the work to consider ‘trade in jobs’, and, proposes a framework to develop Extended national Supply Use tables that capture flows of primary/property income, so providing a mechanism to analyse the links between investment and global value chains. While TiVA estimates have been able to shed important light on our understanding of international trade and its relation to activity and competitiveness, in particular the importance of recognising the importance of imports to exports, and, so, the hitherto hidden costs of protectionism as well as the benefits of trade liberalisation, particularly in services, they do not reveal the full picture. With significant shares of exports being driven by foreign affiliates, TiVA estimates have also revealed the importance of going beyond just value-added towards income, in order to capture flows outside of conventional international trade statistics, such as the repatriation of profits related to the use of non-produced knowledge based assets (e.g. brands) and, indeed, the repatriation of profits related to the use of produced knowledge based assets (e.g. software) that are (often incorrectly) not recorded as receipts from exports of services.

Comparing Labour Productivity Growth in the OECD Area

This paper examines how measurement problems affect international comparisons of labour productivity. It suggests that these measurement problems do not significantly affect the assessment of aggregate productivity patterns in the OECD area. However, these problems do influence the more detailed assessment of productivity growth, notably the role of specific sectors and demand components in aggregate performance. The paper shows that there are only a few significant problems regarding the comparability of nominal GDP across OECD countries, the most important being the treatment of software investment. In most cases, efforts are underway to reduce the size of these differences. Measurement differences for real GDP are also important, although several of these factors have impacts that work in different directions. Moreover, several of these problems primarily affect the distribution of total GDP across different expenditure categories and across different activities, not necessarily ...

A Proposed Framework for Business Demography Indicators

The creation of new businesses and the decline of unproductive ones are often regarded key to business dynamism in OECD economies. Understanding business behaviour, creative destruction and identifying successful and failing businesses, as well as fostering entrepreneurship and innovation, have become increasingly important objectives for policy makers in many OECD economies in recent years. However, despite its growing importance, the study of business dynamics, and entrepreneurship more generally, is hampered by the lack of truly internationally comparable indicators. That is not for a lack of data however, as many statistical institutions and private agencies produce statistics in this domain, but because they lack comparability, are of questionable quality, or are not able to tackle all of the policy questions related to these issues, they can often generate confusion, giving mixed messages to policy makers. The framework of business demography indicators presented in this paper is an attempt to fill this gap by providing a mechanism by which more comparable indicators of business demography can be produced across OECD countries in particular, considering both what is practically achievable and desirable.