Login
Create Account
Canadian Store (CAD)
You are currently shopping in our Canadian store. For orders outside of Canada, please switch to our international store. International and US orders are billed in US dollars.
 |
The Sum of the SatisfactionsCanada in the Age of National Accounting |
eBook Available
A lively, historical account of how Canadians came to be world leaders in national accounting - the political arithmetic of modern societies.
In our age of measurement, economic numbers - productivity, inflation, unemployment, gross domestic product - inform the decisions of both citizen and state. Since World War II, Canada has been at the global forefront in developing a set of national accounts that measure every beat of our economic pulse. The story of our national accounts - today administered by Statistics Canada - involves courage, personal tragedy, and a Canadian knack for innovation.
Determined to banish the ravages of the Depression, win the war, and build a better post-war world, Canadian academics and mandarins applied the ideas of Keynes and Kuznets to the Canadian predicament - a highly regionalized nation interested in building a society that harnessed both the private and public sector to the goal of economic stability and increased national wealth. Today, Canadians know that they can trust the numbers put before them by their national accountants, numbers that support the working culture of our economic citizenship.
Paul Samuelson, Nobel laureate in economics, has described national accounting as the "great invention of the twentieth century." National Business Book Award-winning historian Duncan McDowall now shows how Canadian statisticians have been in the forefront of using numbers to build a better economic world.
Determined to banish the ravages of the Depression, win the war, and build a better post-war world, Canadian academics and mandarins applied the ideas of Keynes and Kuznets to the Canadian predicament - a highly regionalized nation interested in building a society that harnessed both the private and public sector to the goal of economic stability and increased national wealth. Today, Canadians know that they can trust the numbers put before them by their national accountants, numbers that support the working culture of our economic citizenship.
Paul Samuelson, Nobel laureate in economics, has described national accounting as the "great invention of the twentieth century." National Business Book Award-winning historian Duncan McDowall now shows how Canadian statisticians have been in the forefront of using numbers to build a better economic world.
Details
328 Pages, 6 x 9
ISBN 9780773532885
June 2008
Formats: Cloth, eBook
"Duncan McDowall has made a subject that is potentially as attractive as mud into a lively and accessible story which held my interest from start to finish." Charlotte Gray, best-selling author of Reluctant Genius, The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell
"It is a wonderful story. It is far more interesting, and even exciting, than I had ever imagined it could be! ... a book that I could not put down more than I could a really interesting novel about international intrigue." Richard Lipsey, Simon Fraser University
" The Sum of the Satisfactions gives a sophisticated and nuanced history of the development of the national accounts in Canada within the framework of international national accounts, post-war Canadian economic policy and the constant tension between the desire of national accountants to innovate and their recognition of the methodological constraints in which they operate. McDowall's extensive historical research, including numerous interviews of key participants, is particularly commendable, putting faces to the hitherto anonymous public servants who laboured to give Canada a world-class system of national accounts." Andrew Sharpe, Literary Review of Canada
"It is a wonderful story. It is far more interesting, and even exciting, than I had ever imagined it could be! ... a book that I could not put down more than I could a really interesting novel about international intrigue." Richard Lipsey, Simon Fraser University
" The Sum of the Satisfactions gives a sophisticated and nuanced history of the development of the national accounts in Canada within the framework of international national accounts, post-war Canadian economic policy and the constant tension between the desire of national accountants to innovate and their recognition of the methodological constraints in which they operate. McDowall's extensive historical research, including numerous interviews of key participants, is particularly commendable, putting faces to the hitherto anonymous public servants who laboured to give Canada a world-class system of national accounts." Andrew Sharpe, Literary Review of Canada
Duncan McDowall is professor, history, Carleton University.
