Two Methods for Estimating Soviet Military Production.

摘要

This paper is concerned with Soviet military production, the largest component of military expenditure. The well-known approaches to the problem are based either on direct estimation of physical output and prices of military goods or on some type of aggregate residual estimation. Direct estimation has been used by U.S. intelligence sources; residual estimation is used by those who lack the technical means of gathering intelligence. The methods in this paper fall into the category of the residual approach. The approach could generally be pursued in the broader framework of the GNP accounts or in the narrower framework of the machine-building and metalworking (MBMW) complex. In both cases, the estimated activities of civilian production are subtracted from the overall output values, with the difference identified with military production. The paper offers two methods for estimating Soviet military production. The first, which the author calls a direct residual approach, is designed along the traditional lines of estimating civilian MBMW activities. But, unlike the previous attempts, it uses reliable information on outputs of Soviet civilian MBMW ministries. The second method, which he calls a verifiable residual approach, uses Soviet statistics generated during the mandatory certification of goods quality. These statistics allow the computation of the output of military goods combined with certain civilian goods that are identified below. The estimation of military production is then reduced to estimating the size of those 'impurities' in the combined output. The method is in principle verifiable since the required information is open and exists in Soviet statistics, even though it may not be easily accessible.