MEASURING THE NOMINAL VALUE OF FINANCIAL SERVICES IN THE NATIONAL INCOME ACCOUNTS

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Abstract
The recent growth in the U. S. financial service sector has resurrected the controversy over the treatment of financial services in the national income accounts. The main points of contention are the treatment of interest payments and the valuation of “free” financial services provided by banks. To examine different treatments of financial services, we employ a financial firm model that links financial service prices to the user cost of money. We show that our approach subsumes both the Department of Commerce and the U. N. Statistical Office approaches and thereby provides a heretofore absent economic foundation for their methods.