Decomposing, Interpretating and Enhancing our Understanding of Economies: Some Brief Reflections on the Contributions of Graham Pyatt

Graham Pyatt and his collaborators introduced new ways of exploring the structure and functioning of economies through the use of social accounting matrices. This paper focuses on the measurement and impact of alternative measures of income formation; Pyatt’s systems made an important distinction between factor and institutional income that has become an increasingly important issue in the measurement of income inequality. Some recent developments will be explored, with a focus on the work of Miyazawa whose concept of the interrelational income multiplier matrix embraced part but not all of Pyatt’s attention to income dynamics. The paper provides some recent extensions to these initiatives.