Die Volkswirtschaftlichen Gesamtrechnungen in Zeiten der Pandemie – wurden alle Herausforderungen gemeistert?

The Corona pandemic has confronted official statistics, and national accounts in particular, with enormous challenges. New, previously unobserved phenomena had to be integrated into the system and it became necessary to operate with missing and changed data bases. At the same time, the legitimate information needs of the general public and decision-makers had to be satisfied under difficult conditions. Fundamental conceptual questions, which can usually be neglected, became virulent. For example, the question had to be answered as to whether prices can exist if no transactions take place and it had to be clarified which concept of production should be operationalized.

In the system of national accounts both a technical concept of production and an economic concept of production are present, as will be shown in some detail on the basis of selected provisions of the system. Under normal conditions, both concepts will produce similar results. However, as illustrated in the article, under the special circumstances of the pandemic major differences can result.

Under the pressure of events, a very pragmatic approach was chosen in the pandemic and the failure to address central conceptual issues was also excused by the fact that the impact on the big aggregates is small and can be neglected. This is certainly true for the fulfilment of the monitoring role and for the dominant operational functions of the main aggregates. However, national accounts also have an important role to play as the empirical basis for economic research. In this context, the conceptual issues deserve more attention. The challenge of providing users with adequate information was also insufficiently addressed. In the presentation of the results, the different characteristics of the results for the pandemic periods due to the specific situation were mostly ignored.