Abstract
There is a lively debate concerning the accurate reflection of the digitalization of the economy in the System of National Accounts (SNA), and as a part of this the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has put forward a conceptual framework (guidelines) to comprehensively measure digital economic activity in its Digital Supply-Use Tables (SUTs), which configure the classification of industries, products and transactions and are suited to grasping the digital economy. Similarly to the attempts already made in some countries, we made a calculation (for the years 2015 and 2018) of Japan’s digital SUTs making measurements as closely as feasible to those in the OECD guidelines. In addition, while free digital services such as the social media and search engines provided over the internet are outside of the production boundary of the SNA, they exert a considerable impact on consumer welfare. Research is underway on estimation methods and conceptual frameworks within the SNA concerning the measurement of these values, and we present an outline of the main results here. Work on the revision of the 2008SNA is currently being con-ducted, and it is expected that the data that is the most important resource of the digital economy will be capitalized and its measurement and valuation will have a large impact upon main aggregates like GDP.
