Methodology & provenance
How Measuring the Wealth of Nations is constructed,
where every number comes from, and what is and isn’t covered. This is
the dataset-level Data Provenance Record; each series also carries its own
DPR in the Explore construction drawer.
Data Provenance Record
- Project
- Replication and Extension of Shaikh & Tonak (1994)
- Producer
- Arcanum Research
- Summary
- An open replication and modern extension of Shaikh & Tonak's Measuring the Wealth of Nations: The Political Economy of National Accounts (Cambridge, 1994). 59 published Marxian national-accounting series — total product, constant and variable capital, surplus value, the rate of exploitation, the profit rate and the net social wage — for the book period (1948–1989) plus an extension built from BEA and BLS data, alongside replications of the follow-up studies the project actually carries: Tonak (1984), Shaikh & Tonak (1987), Shaikh & Tonak (2002), Moos (2017), Mohun (2005), Mohun (2014) and Cronin (2001). Every series and subseries resolves to a full bibliographic record.
- Attribution
- Cite the named primary source in each series' provenance record; cite the reconstruction as the project (CITATION.cff ships in every download bundle).
- Period covered
- 1948–1989 (replication core); 1990–2025 (modern extension)
- Coverage
- 59 of 59 series carry plottable data, organised into 5 groups
- Construction
- Built with the Anu data-construction pipeline. Each script carries a phase prefix — Loading (L), Processing (P), Validation (V), Manual adjustment (M), Analysis (A), Output (O) — so the build reads as an ordered method. No synthetic, placeholder, or proxy values; series that cannot be sourced are marked data-unavailable.
- Provenance records
- Each series ships a full provenance record, downloadable from the explainer on its Explore page.
- Units
- Every series carries an explicit unit (per subseries where they differ); no mixed-unit columns. Units travel with the series in the download files and the data dictionary.
- Downloads
- CSV + XLSX + Parquet (zipped) · per-series download catalogue
- Source code & data
- https://github.com/andenick/measuring-the-wealth-of-nations
- Refresh cadence
- Refreshed on demand (no fixed schedule) — manual RED rebuild + web re-export when source data is revised or the extension is updated
How each series is built
-
L##
Loading
Fetch and read the raw source data — API pulls, archived tables, digitised book figures — and validate that the fetched units match what the named source promises.
-
P##
Processing
Construct each series: rebase, splice vintages, deflate, and combine inputs. Composite and formula series are assembled here, with a dimensional-analysis check whenever units differ. Processing — and processing only.
-
V##
Validation
Check every constructed series against the original published figures and tables — mean absolute error, endpoint sanity, unit and scale audits. A series only passes when it reproduces the source values. The exact figure, table, or page being reproduced is cited in that series' provenance record (Explore → the construction drawer).
-
M##
Manual adjustment
Apply documented hand corrections where the source itself requires them — each adjustment recorded with its rationale, never a silent edit.
-
A##
Analysis
Derive the downstream analytical quantities the book reports (ratios, trends, decompositions) from the validated series.
-
O##
Output
Write the publishable artifacts: the tidy per-series CSVs, the Parquet files, the data dictionary, and the per-series provenance records that ship with the data.
Full project documentation
RED — Real Econ Data: web export v1.1.0
A public, download-ready projection of the RED data project. Nothing here is
recomputed: every value is carried over unchanged from the constructed series.
What is in it
| Slice |
Contents |
Published series |
Withheld |
mwn/ |
Shaikh & Tonak, Measuring the Wealth of Nations (1994) |
59 |
4 |
ccc/ |
Shaikh, Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises (2016) |
110 |
6 |
comparative/NSW/ |
Net social wage: the competing lines compared |
117 |
— |
comparative/MOHUN/ |
Mohun's recomputation of the categories |
19 |
— |
comparative/BEA_VINTAGE/ |
Source-vintage and classification dossiers |
2 dossiers |
— |
How to use it
WEB_MANIFEST.json (root) is the index: slices, counts, and everything withheld.- Each slice has its own
WEB_MANIFEST.json, series_registry.json and
data_dictionary.csv.
- Each comparative section has a
SECTION_MANIFEST.json listing every component
that can be downloaded on its own.
data_dictionary.csv (root) is one row per component across all slices, each
with a full source string; CITATION_REGISTRY.json holds the bibliographic
records those rows point at.
Formats
Every series ships as CSV and Parquet. The net-social-wage comparison also
ships as an Excel workbook, and each comparative section ships its study as PDF.
The two book modules keep the layouts they were built in: mwn/ is wide (a
metadata row, a component-ID row, then one row per year), ccc/ and the
comparative layer are long (year, value, subseries_id, source_id, units).
What is withheld, and why
Nothing is dropped silently. Every withheld series is listed with its reason in
WEB_MANIFEST.json and in its slice registry. Two kinds of exclusion occur:
series triaged as not sensibly publishable (a matrix reduced to a scalar, a
single-year survey snapshot, a series whose construction was found unfaithful),
and one series withheld for licensing — its book-period source is commercially
licensed and may not be redistributed.
Series that were removed from the project outright, because their claimed
provenance could not be substantiated, are named under de_registered_series in
WEB_MANIFEST.json. None of their values appear anywhere in this export.
Citations: 277 bibliographic records ship; 1 are excluded (incomplete records, and the licensed
source above), each listed with a reason.
Version
v1.1.0 (2026-08-19): full regeneration from the corrected sources after the zero-fabrication purge and the RM1-RM6 remediation campaign. The v1.0.0 export had only been patched in place and its metadata layer still asserted pre-purge counts. The directory name is deliberately unchanged at red_Web_v1.0.0 so that existing dataset configurations and download paths keep resolving; the version of the export is carried in this field, not in the directory name.