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ACCOUNTING FOR MINERAL RESOURCES: ISSUES AND BEA'S INITIAL ESTIMATES

Second, previous tests assume compensation schemes always induce managers to select income increasing accounting procedures. The schemes examined in my study also give managers an incentive to select income-decreasing proce- dures. For example, they typically permit funds to be set aside for compensa- tion awards when earnings exceed a specified target. If earnings are so low that no matter which accounting procedures are selected target. | 50 SURVEy GF CURRENT BUSINESS April 1994 Accounting for Mineral Resources Issues and BEA s Initial Estimates MONG NATURAL assets the characteristics of minerals oil gas coal and nonfuel minerals are the most similar to the characteristics of assets included in traditional economic accounting systems. Not surprisingly then minerals have long been considered as candidates for a treatment that is symmetrical with the treatment given other assets. Such a treatment is at the heart of the integrated economic and environmental satellite accounts ieesa s which are the subject of a companion article beginning on page 33. Failure to account symmetrically for mineral resources as a form of capital has been blamed both for their over- or under-exploitation and for incomplete analysis and policy decisions in areas relating to productivity and budgeting. The companion article noted three points of asymmetry between the treatment given assets such as structures and equipment in the traditional economic accounts and the treatment given natural assets. First in traditional economic accounts there is no entry for additions to the stock of natural resources parallel to the entry for additions to the stock of structures and equipment. Second there is no explicit entry for the contribution of natural resources to current production as measured by gross domestic product gdp parallel to the entries that capture the value added of structures and equipment. Finally there is no entry for the using up of the stock of natural resources parallel to the entry for the depreciation of structures and equipment used to arrive at net domestic product ndp which is used by some as a shorthand measure of sustainable product. This treatment given mineral resources in the traditional economic accounts is anomalous in several respects. First firms spend large amounts of time and other resources in proving mineral reserves and these reserves like structures and equipment yield a flow of services over many