Toward a Global Integrated Industry-level Production Account: A Proposal

This article develops the framework for a global production account. We describe the relationship between existing KLEMS approaches and databases, international guidelines on GDP and productivity measurement, and our proposal toward a global integrated production account. The key feature of the account is an integrated world input-output table in current and constant prices, augmented with constant quality prices and quantities for primary factor inputs by industry, all converted with conceptually appropriate purchasing power parities. Uses of the framework include: 1) industry and country-level contributions to world economic growth, 2) price level indexes that serve as measures of industry-level competitiveness across countries, 3) total factor productivity level comparisons at the industry level, and 4) global production chain analysis. None of these are applications are currently possible with existing country-industry-level KLEMS databases.