Social Accounting Matrices
In applied economic work one sometimes needs more detailed insights into the effects of economic policy on households, labour, social institutions, and so on, than what standard input-output analysis can provide.
For this purpose the social accounting matrices (SAM) approach has been developed (see Pyatt 1985). It expands the input-output framework by means of several accounts, such as the household account, the government account and the rest-of-the-world account, which contain detailed information on the transactions and transfers occurring in the economic system. Since the information usually comes from different sources, this may lead to inconsistencies in the data. Balancing techniques have been developed to remove the inconsistencies. SAM models are often part of computable general equilibrium (CGE) models, the use of which has been propagated by the World Bank.Guido Erreygers