Social Accounting Matrices

UNU-WIDER provides Social Accounting Matrices for South Africa, Mozambique, Viet Nam, and Zimbabwe.

A SAM is a consistent data framework that captures the information contained in the national income and product accounts and a supply-use table (SUT), as well as the monetary flows between institutions. Since is an ex-post accounting framework, within its square matrix, total receipts must equal total payments for each account reported by the SAM.

The required data is drawn from various sources and must therefore be compiled and made consistent. This process is valuable since it helps identify inconsistencies among statistical sources.

For example, there are invariably differences between the incomes and expenditures reported in national household surveys and national accounts. SAMs are economy-wide databases which are used in conjunction with analytical techniques to strengthen the evidence underlying policy decisions.

Data and documentation

Archive