Q.
a) Describe the main functions of commercial banks based on the two (2) following aspects:
i. Acceptance of deposits (5 marks)
ii. Loan Facilities (5 marks)
b) Discuss two (2) methods of measuring the national income (10 marks)
(20 marks, 2018 Q8)
A.
a) Repeat of 2015 Q8
Although the question asks for 2 methods, there are 3 methods of measuring national income.
Three methods are:
- Output method (Gross Domestic Product - GDP)
- Expenditure method (Gross National Product - GNP)
- Income method (Net National Income - NNI)
All are specially concerned with counting the total amount of goods and services produced within the economy and by different sectors. The boundary is usually defined by geography or citizenship, and it is also defined as the total income of the nation and also restrict the goods and services that are counted. For instance, some measures count only goods & services that are exchanged for money, excluding bartered goods, while other measures may attempt to include bartered goods by imputing monetary values to them.
In order to count a good or service, it is necessary to assign value to it. The value that the measures of national income and output assign to a good or service is its market value – the price it fetches when bought or sold. The actual usefulness of a product (its use-value) is not measured – assuming the use-value to be any different from its market value.
Three strategies have been used to obtain the market values of all the goods and services produced: the product (or output) method, the expenditure method, and the income method.
The product method looks at the economy on an industry-by-industry basis. The total output of the economy is the sum of the outputs of every industry. However, since an output of one industry may be used by another industry and become part of the output of that second industry, to avoid counting the item twice we use not the value output by each industry, but the value-added; that is, the difference between the value of what it puts out and what it takes in. The total value produced by the economy is the sum of the values-added by every industry.
The expenditure method is based on the idea that all products are bought by somebody or some organisation. Therefore, we sum up the total amount of money people and organisations spend in buying things. This amount must equal the value of everything produced. Usually, expenditures by private individuals, expenditures by businesses, and expenditures by government are calculated separately and then summed to give the total expenditure. Also, a correction term must be introduced to account for imports and exports outside the boundary.
The income method works by summing the incomes of all producers within the boundary. Since what they are paid is just the market value of their product, their total income must be the total value of the product. Wages, proprietor's incomes, and corporate profits are the major subdivisions of income.
Ref:
Wikipedia search "measures of national income", available at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measures_of_national_income_and_output
Earlier posts.