Collected Articles of Kishori Lal - ARCHIVED

How does one summarize a lifetime of professional accomplishment? In some instances, one good way is to compile a book, as we have done here. This volume brings together in one place the substantial number of papers written by Kishori Lal during his lengthy career as a national accounts statistician at Statistics Canada.

Kishori's papers cover a range of subject matter, responding to the twisting current of events through parts of five decades. They have one thing in common: All of the papers focus on one or another aspect of the development of Canada's System of National Accounts. Kishori believes deeply in and is utterly devoted to that system. It grew and evolved quite radically during Kishori's long career. The changes Canada's SNA went through followed closely, or in some cases led the development of the international SNA standard. He has left his mark indelibly on both.

The advent of the 1993 SNA gave the impetus for several papers. These examined the implications of the new standard for Canada's national accounts and explored issues associated with its practical implementation in the 1997 historical revision. 'Production' was always a central focus of his work and many of the papers in this volume consider aspects of Canada's input-output accounts. Over the years he also turned his attention to several specific production measurement issues, such as the treatment of 'financial intermediation services indirectly measured' (FISIM) and inventory change. International comparisons were a special interest. Indeed one of his best papers, written in the year before he retired, contrasted the United States national accounts with the Canadian accounts. This detailed and authoritative paper was widely acclaimed south as well as north of the border. Subsequently the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicated they intended to prepare a similar paper, extending the comparison to include the Australian national accounts, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris asked if they could publish Kishori's work to give the study even wider exposure.