National Wealth Statistics and Economic Science

Abstract

Up to the end of the 90-s, the Russian statistics used the Soviet methodology to evaluate fixed assets. In order to bring the accounting value of fixed assets to the scale of their replacement value, six general revaluations had been carried out. In 1998, the Russia’s statistical office implemented international statistical standards which meant that the method of continuous stocktaking should be used to account for the value of fixed capital, and general revaluations should be rejected. However, the use of internationally accepted statistical methodology and accounting standards did not raise the reliability of indicators characterizing the value of national wealth elements and did not expand their list. The main reason for increasing degradation of the Russian statistics is a low level of Russia’s economy and inability of its representatives to verify the objectivity of indicators declared by statistics. This situation of Russia’s economics is largely the result of a negative Soviet legacy and repression against leading Soviet economists involved in national wealth valuation. In the post-Soviet period, the negative academic traditions of the economics of the past were not broken, on the contrary, they were strengthened due to mass distribution of postmodern theories among economists which denied that the centuries-old traditional economics would be able to understand the present and destroyed academic intellectual continuity. Postmodernism, unlike traditional economics, does not give a high priority in the economy to national wealth and its basic element, physical capital, and does not consider investment the most important factor of economic growth.