Estonia - Exports of Goods and Services

For Estonia, quarterly national accounts, including GDP by three approaches, and a branch account for employment.

GDP

In its National Accounts presentation, Statistics Estonia reports gross domestic product (GDP) and its components by the production, expenditure, and income approaches. By the production approach, GDP at market prices is defined as the sum of gross values added of resident producers plus net taxes on products. From the expenditure approach, GDP is defined as the sum of total final expenditure at purchasers' prices, gross capital formation, exports of goods and services less imports of goods and services. Last, by the income approach, GDP is the sum of compensation of employees, consumption of fixed capital, net operating surplus or mixed income and taxes linked to production and imports less subsidies. However, the net operating surplus and mixed income are derived as residual values.

Employment

Employment indicators for the national accounts presentation are based on the quarterly results of the Estonia Labor Force Survey (ELFS), which are continuous since 2000Q1. Reference weeks for households in the sample are spread uniformly throughout the whole year, i.e. for every week of the year, the same number of interviews are conducted.

Active:

• Framework: ESA 2010
• Classification: EMTAK 2008, the localization of NACE Rev. 2
• Measurements:
  • Millions of euros at current prices (Mil. EUR)
  • Millions of euros at chained year-2015 prices (Mil. Ch. 2015 EUR)
  • Chained index (Ch. Index 2015=100)
  • Thousands of persons (Ths. #)
• Adjustments:
  • Working day adjusted and seasonally adjusted (WDASA)
  • Seasonally adjusted (SA)
  • Not seasonally adjusted (NSA)
• Native frequency: Quarterly
• Start date: Uniformly 1995Q1
• Geo coverage:

Predecessors:

• ESA 2010, in 2010 EUR - 1995 to 2019 (archive specifier "_10")
• ESA 95, EMTAK 2008, in 2005 EUR - 1995 to 2014 ("_05")
• ESA 95, EMTAK 2003, in 2000 EUR - 1993 to 2011 ("00")
• In EEK - 1993 to ?? ("KR")

In September 2014, Statistics Estonia adopted the European System of Accounts 2010 (ESA 2010) methodology for all national accounts presentations. Where applicable, economic activities are reported according to the Estonia Classification of Economic Activities (EMTAK 2008), a localization of NACE Rev. 2. Note that the Statistical Classification of Products by Activity in the European Community (CPA 2008) is also applied to GDP calculations.

GDP

In GDP calculations, the hidden economy is taken into account. Statistics Estonia estimates the hidden economy in all institutional sectors (except for general government) and economic activities.

Transactions with goods and services are usually entered into national accounts by the accrual method of accounting. In case of market output and manufacturing for own end use, the output and value added are assessed at basic prices and intermediate consumption is assessed at purchaser’s prices.

GDP and its transactions are estimated at current prices and at previous year’s prices. Values at previous year’s prices are chain-linked in order to compare the GDP and its components in different periods. Previous year’s prices are calculated by double deflation, where market output and intermediate consumption are deflated separately and value added is found as the difference between these two transactions.

Chain-linking method

Since the 2nd quarter of 2008 Statistics Estonia uses chain-linking method to estimate the real growth rate of GDP and its components. Chain-linking method has been applied for the GDP time series from 2000.

A single fixed base year is not applied to chain-linking — every previous calendar year is used as a base for calculations. Annual and quarterly volume changes are linked together as a “cumulative chain”, which expresses real growth from the reference year.

Obligation to make national accounts calculations at previous year prices and chain linked proceeds from the Regulation (EC) No 1392/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 November 2007 amending Council Regulation (EC) No 2223/96 with respect to the transmission of national accounts data.

This method improves the quality of growth estimates in national accounts. Changing base year annually ensures the use of up-to-date price structures and enables to derive volume changes more accurately. There is also no need for recalculating the time series in order to change the base year, since re-referencing will not change growth rates.

Chain-linking improves international comparability of GDP and its components. At the moment most EU Member States as well as the majority of other developed countries (USA, Canada, Japan, Norway and Switzerland) are already using it.

In Estonia, annual overlap technique (AOL) has been selected for the calculations at previous year prices — value of a quarter of a current accounting period is calculated based on the average prices of the previous year (t-1).  

Chain-linking causes non-additivity of GDP components — loss of additivity of volumes in all years except the reference year and the year following the reference year. The problem arises because chain-linked value of the aggregate is extrapolated separately and not found by adding together chain-linked components.

Employment

The expansion of the data from the ELFS is based on the estimated population as of January 1 of the reference year. The expansion coefficients are calculated according to county, sex, and five-year age-groups. All data presented are estimates of actual parameters. Estimates that are based on less than 20 persons of the sample are not been published as they are not sufficiently reliable.

Definitions

Labor force

the economically active population - persons who are willing and able to work (sum of employed and unemployed persons)

Employed

a person who, during the reference period, worked and was paid as a wage earner, entrepreneur or a free-lancer; worked without direct payment in a family enterprise or in his/her own farm; was temporarily absent from work

Employment

all persons (including employees and self-employed) engaged in economic activities; characterized by number of employed persons

Hours worked

aggregate number of hours actually worked as an employee or self-employed during the accounting period

Job

explicit or implicit contract between a person and a resident institutional unit to perform work in return for compensation for a defined perioed or until further notice.

Self-employed

persons who are the sole owners or joint owners of the unincorporated enterprises in which they work

Unemployed

a person who:

1. does not work anywhere at the moment but is not temporarily absent from work
2. is currently (in the course of two weeks) available for work if there should be work
3. is actively seeking work

Working-age/labor-age population

population between the ages of 15 and 74; the population of the age targeted in a labor force survey

Unit labor cost

the ratio of total labor costs to real output; measures the average cost of labor per unit of output; represents a link between productivity and the cost of labor in producing output

Labor productivity

measures the output per unit of labor input

Moody's Analytics supplements

For nominal and real GVA, we compute seasonally adjusted variants.

For employee compensation, we back-extend and compute an SA variant.

The quarterly data for GDP are revised on the basis of the annual national accounts and become final 18 months after the end of the reference year.

The revisions and recalculations of previous national accounts figures take place with the introduction of new national accounts rules, concepts and classifications. The recalculations occur also in the cases when the compilation methods are improved (introduction of new methods).

Attribution

Much of the information on this page has been taken directly from the source.

Further reading

At the source:

• GDP
• Employment