The Social Accounting Framework for Development: Concepts, Construction and Applications

The Social Accounting Matrix is widely acknowledged as a particularly meaningful tool for obtaining an integrated system of social and economic statistics, in particular in application for developing countries. This book provides a thorough background to this approach to national accounting. It is about the conceptualization, design, construction and application of social accounting for developing countries. The book brings together the authors' long practical experience in constructing and analysing Social Accounting Matrices (SAMs) for a whole range of developing countries. It describes the relations between social accounting and other major economy-wide statistical systems and focuses on all the principal systems involved in applying in social accounting framework in different socio-economic contexts. It also focuses on flow-of-funds systems within the SAM framework and on the extension of the SAM framework to system of socio-economic accounts (SSA) including demographic data, volumes and prices, social indicators and (domestic and external) financial assets and liabilities. The book further shows the links between SAM construction and modelling applications. All these issues are introduced with basic conceptualizations and with practical applications, with special reference to the cases of Indonesia and Ecuador.