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 ...