The national accounts for Italy, Spain and Portugal

Abstract

The paper deals with the development of historical national accounting in Italy, Spain and Portugal - three Latin countries with. generally speaking, the same statistical tradition. We present a detailed account of the literature with a critical assessment of the existing series and an agenda for further research. Italy is the country with a longer tradition in historical national accounting. while Portugal is just beginning to produce historical estimates. For each country we select the best existing estimates, that are published here for the first time - including a complete new set of output estimates for Portugal. We find a common pattern of GDP growth for all three countries - an intriguing feature that will deserve more attention in the future.