Time-use and economic activity: inputs, outputs and outcomes

This addresses two issues within the System of National Accounts which remain unresolved in its 2025 revision. (1) The SNA excludes most final production by and intended for private households, even though technical change often involves transfer of productive tasks out of the money economy and into these, or similar, small enterprises. And (2) it fails to distinguish between final output at the General Production Boundary, and other unintended, individual or collective outcomes of economic activity. Both problems relate to the inadequate conceptualisation of final consumption, which is required to complement Reid’s (1934) “3rd person” definition of production. SNA 2025 recommends the construction of “extended accounts” using prices of analogous commodities in the money economy to “shadow” those from outside the money nexus—but these do not exhaust the full range of non-money production and consumption.