https://macropaperwarehouse.com/authors/emil-toft-vestergaard/Emil Toft VestergaardHugo -- gohugo.ioen-ushttps://macropaperwarehouse.com/papers/disaggregated-economic-accounts/https://macropaperwarehouse.com/papers/disaggregated-economic-accounts/<p>This paper develops and implements a <strong>system of disaggregated economic accounts</strong> that breaks down national accounting positions into bilateral flows between small groups of consumers, producers, the government, and the rest of the world. Standard national accounts document aggregate income and production plus input-output trade between producer industries; they contain no comprehensive data on which consumers buy from which producers or which producers pay income to which consumers. The paper fills this gap by measuring, for Denmark, all 36 positions in the UN System of National Accounts (SNA) — consumer spending, labor compensation, profit income, intermediates trade, government transfers and taxes, and foreign trade — as bilateral cell-to-cell flows, satisfying all national accounting identities at the level of individual cells and at the aggregate level. The data reveal systematic stylized facts about domestic spending shares, gravity of spending, urban bias, and assortative matching between consumer and producer characteristics. Combining the disaggregated accounts with a general equilibrium model with nominal wage rigidities, the paper shows that <strong>fiscal transfer multipliers vary substantially across consumer cells</strong> — from below 1 to above 2 — depending on the <strong>spending intensity</strong> of recipient cells on the slack (unemployed) portion of the economy. Applying the framework to a hypothetical U.S. tariff shock on Denmark (calibrated to July 2025 effective tariff levels on China), the paper demonstrates that the cells generating the highest multipliers are not those directly exposed to the shock or even those made slack, but those whose spending intensity on slack cells is high. The disaggregated accounts allow the government to select more effective fiscal policies: choosing transfers targeting high-spending-intensity cells saves approximately <strong>0.4–0.7% of Danish GDP</strong> relative to programs targeting low-intensity cells, for the same GDP stimulus.</p>