Differences from SNA
The main structural differences between MPS and UNSNA are attributable to a different interpretation of newly created value, and of the accumulation of stocks of wealth. Consequently, there are differences in grossing and netting procedures for the main aggregates. In MPS, many services are not regarded as value-adding, and therefore excluded from the total net output. As the name suggests, the MPS aims to measure the annual output of ''material goods'', in contrast with services. In MPS the economy is divided up into three sectors: (1) productive enterprises, (2) the non-productive sphere, and (3) households. Typically the planning authorities also collected comprehensive data on the physical units of products produced. This is normally not the case in conventional national accounts, which measure only the momentary market value of outputs produced.Attribution to Marx and Smith
The MPS accounts originated in the Soviet Union, around the same time that the first Western attempts were also made to create systematic social accounts (i.e. in the later 1920s and 1930s). They were influenced by the ideasMeasurement of prices
Critics of MPS accounts argue that by providing a lot of detail about the value and physical quantity of tangible products produced, but very little detail about those who depended on that production as consumers, how income, consumer items and capital wealth were truly ''distributed'' in the USSR. However, supporters of the system argued that, if many goods and services are supplied to ordinary consumers free of charge, or below cost (a "socialized" component of household income) then valuing consumption expenditures in money prices becomes both difficult and rather meaningless. In that case, it is argued, a more appropriate strategy is to measure what physical goods and services people actually consume, and to what benefits they are entitled. Whatever the case, it is clear that there is a big difference in valuation methods between MPS and UNSNA, since MPS in large part works withSee also
*Notes
Further reading
*M. Yanovsky, ''Anatomy of Social Accounting Systems''. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1965. *Vaclav Holesovsky, "Karl Marx and Soviet National Income Theory", ''The American Economic Review'', Vol. 51, No. 3 (Jun., 1961), pp. 325–344. *Paul Studenski, "Methods of Estimating National Income in Soviet Russia", ''Studies in Income and Wealth'', Vol. 8, NBER 194External links