[4] National accounting has developed in tandem with macroeconomics from the 1930s with its relation of aggregate demand to total output through interaction of such broad expenditure categories as consumption and investment.
[1][6] National accounts broadly present output, expenditure, and income activities of the economic actors (households, corporations, government) in an economy, including their relations with other countries' economies, and their wealth (net worth).
As to stocks, the 'capital accounts' are a balance-sheet approach that has assets on one side (including values of land, the capital stock, and financial assets) and liabilities and net worth on the other, measured as of the end of the accounting period.
[7][8][9][10] Such aggregate measures and their change over time are generally of strongest interest to economic policymakers, although the detailed national accounts contain a source of information for economic analysis, for example in the input-output tables which show how industries interact with each other in the production process.
They are usually compiled by national statistical offices and/or central banks in each country, though this is not always the case, and may be released on both an annual and (less detailed) quarterly frequency.
Practical issues include inaccuracies from differences between economic and accounting methodologies, lack of controlled experiments on quality of data from diverse sources, and measurement of intangibles and services of the banking and financial sectors.
It has been proposed as a better guide to the sustainability of a fiscal policy than budget deficits, which reflect only taxes minus spending in the current year.
An Australian study has shown the value of this uncounted work to be approximately 50% of GDP, making its exclusion rather significant.
This was made more pressing by the Great Depression and as a basis for Keynesian macroeconomic stabilisation policy and wartime economic planning.
The first efforts to develop such measures were undertaken in the late 1920s and 1930s, notably by Colin Clark and Simon Kuznets.
Kuznets building on a project that was underway https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c4231/c4231.pdf, Lillian Epstein had been involved in earlier studies.