New Developments in the Euro Area Accounts
Celestino Giron-Pastor, Andreas Hertkorn, Tjeerd Jellema, Gabriel Quiros, Nuno Silva
Directorate General Statistics, European Central Bank, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

The euro area accounts, published since June 2007, provide a full sequence of transactions accounts and a complete rendering of institutional sectors' financial balance sheets for the euro area. Over the past years, this rather complete framework has been further enhanced in a number of ways. It was recently extended to include estimates of non-financial assets by institutional sector, including households housing wealth. This is an important step towards completing the institutional sectors balance sheets, allowing inter-alia for a dynamic analysis of the development of household net worth, covering the contributions of both non-financial and financial assets.

Furthermore, the understanding of the financing and financial investment by institutional sector of the euro area is now greatly enhanced by the publication of who-to-whom data on loans and deposits, allowing a n inter-sectoral perspective for these instruments. We report on steps underway to extend the coverage of who-to-whom to marketable instruments (securities).

The importance of balance sheet developments since the start of the financial crisis also highlights the need for a more formal decomposition of the other flows into holding gains/losses and volume changes other than transactions (as they may arise from reclassification of institutional units or instruments). These two enhancements would then enable a detailed analysis of balance-sheet vulnerabilities and contagion risks across sectors.

Keywords: Euro area; Integrated sector accounts; Flow of funds; Non-financial assets

Biography: Mr. Jellema is the advisor - co-ordinator of the euro ara accounts team in the euro area acounts and economic data division of the directorate genral statistics of the european central bank.

Mr. Jellema has been active in the field of national accounts since 1983. As a consultant he has advised on the implementation of SNA93 and ESA95 in several countries inside and outside Europe.

He joined the ECB in 2002 and was closely involved in the development of the euro area accounts.