According to the Satellite Accounts, were they included they would increase GDP by around 80%. In an ideal world, we would observe the output of volunteers – the goods and services they produce – and work out what they could fetch in the market, just as with GDP. But there is no market for services in which no monetary transaction is involved. What the ILO recommends instead – and what the ONS does in practice – is to capture the value of the labour input used in producing these services, as a proxy for their market value. Specifically, the ONS identifies particular voluntary activities from household surveys and  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  then maps those to paid occupations. Taking the median hourly wage for those occupations, and multiplying by the number of hours volunteers provide, gives an estimate of the volunteering sector’s output on a replacement cost basis. Using this method, the ONS calculates that frequent, formal volunteering produced just short of £ billion of economic output in 2012. This would be equivalent to 1.5% of GDP. That is sizable. It would make volunteering one of the most important industrial sectors in the UK, producing twice as much value as the agriculture sector and about the same amount as the telecoms or the insurance and pension fund sectors. Of course, any estimate relies on certain assumptions. Let me highlight three important ones. First, these estimates consider only formal and frequent volunteering.
8  BIS Review 113/2007  turmoil. It is all the more important to acknowledge these achievements since it was said in some quarters that the euro would never see the light of day or that it would create severe economic disruptions. Those scenarios have not materialised. In the post-war European adventure, the euro represents a major milestone. That said, and whatever its own merits, a currency is not an end in itself, even though the new EU members are keen on adopting it as soon as possible. Entry into Monetary Union must be founded on a sustainable convergence process. Enlargement of the euro area also gives renewed impetus to addressing the challenges ahead as it makes it more pressing for policy-makers to tackle long-ignored weaknesses. This is a crucial contribution to building a stronger EU, in which I strongly believe. All in all, let me express my confidence in the future of the euro and of the single monetary policy of a large Euro zone. BIS Review 113/2007  9  10  BIS Review 113/2007  BIS Review 113/2007  11  12  BIS Review 113/2007  BIS Review 113/2007  13