Assessing ’s Prototype Integrated Economic and Environmental Satellite Accounts

,  - panel of the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council completed a Congressionally mandated review of the work that the Bureau of Economic Analysis () had published on integrated economic and environmental accounts. The panel commended  for its initial work in producing a set of sound and objective prototype accounts. In particular, the panel endorsed ’s proposal not to redefine the core  estimates but to construct satellite, or supplemental, accounts of environmental activity. They also underlined the importance of ’s development of a set of environmental accounts consistent with sound economic principles in areas such as the measurement of prices and the treatment of depletion and investment. The panel found value in ’s phased approach to economic accounting but recommended a more comprehensive approach that encompassed—in addition to environmental and natural resources—the value of unpaid work, the value of investments in human capital, and the uses of peoples’ time. While finding that such augmented accounts would produce large public and private benefits, the panel emphasized that this work should not come at the expense of ’s core national economic accounts. Following are two articles that report on the panel’s work. The first is an overview of the major issues and findings by William D. Nordhaus, the Chair of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting. The second is a reprint of chapter , “Overall Appraisal of Environmental Accounting in The United States,” from the panel’s final report, Nature’s Numbers. Next spring, as part of its promise to inform its users of the results of this evaluation,  will reprint several additional chapters from Nature’s Numbers, which discuss in more detail the panel’s evaluation of ’s work on integrated environmental and economic accounting.