Papers
This page provides access to papers and presentations prepared by BEA staff. Abstracts are presented in HTML format; complete papers are in PDF format with selected tables in XLS format. The views expressed in these papers are solely those of the authors and not necessarily those of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis or the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Keeping Economic Statistics Relevant through Updating the System of National Accounts
Electronic Data Collection at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
This paper describes the electronic data collection system at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Specifically, the paper focuses on the operation and management of the Automated Survey Transmission and Retrieval (ASTAR) system that has been in use since 2000, and the second generation of… Read more
From Respondent Debriefings to Pilot Test and Beyond: A Comprehensive Redesign of a Questionnaire Measuring Foreign Direct Investment
In 2004, survey methodologists at the U.S. Census Bureau began a project with the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to aid in the evaluation and redesign of two of their self-administered survey questionnaires. These surveys, one annual and the other quarterly, collect foreign direct… Read more
The Statistical Discrepancy
The statistical discrepancy is equal to gross domestic product less gross domestic income. These two measures are, in principle, the same. The difference reflects less than perfect source data. The paper finds few components that statistically significantly explain the discrepancy in the last 35… Read more
Intermittent Purchases and Welfare-Based Price Deflators for Durable Goods
The consensus among inflation watchers is that biases in official price indexes like the consumer price index overstate true inflation. We identify a new source of bias that works in the other direction. In particular, we use a simple dynamic model for durable goods—one type of good typically… Read more
Private Nonresidential Building and Apartment Prices
In a previous paper, Loebach (2005), I examined the feasibility of using a data base of contracts from F.W. Dodge to construction nonresidential building price indexes for a single state. This paper is an extension of that research that explores price indexes for seven types of nonresidential… Read more
A Balanced System of Industry Accounts for the U.S. and Structural Distribution of Statistical Discrepancy
This paper describes and illustrates a generalized least squares (GLS) reconciliation method that can efficiently incorporate all available information on initial data in reconciling a large system of disaggregated accounts and can accurately estimate industry distribution of statistical… Read more
An Overview of BEA's Source Data and Estimating Methods for Quarterly GDP
This paper provides an overview of the source data and the estimating methods used by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to prepare the quarterly estimates of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). When BEA prepares its first estimates of quarterly GDP, a wide mix of source data are used. In… Read more
Statistical Issues Related to Global Economic Imbalances: Perspectives on "Dark Matter"
There has been a large amount of recent interest in how the U.S. can be the so-called world's largest debtor nation and at the same time have a persistent surplus on income in its balance of payments accounts. Based on BEA's published data, two factors explain the incongruence -- a difference in… Read more
The Role of Hedonic Methods in Measuring Real GDP in the United States
Accurate price indexes are crucial for preparing accurate estimates of real gross domestic product and corresponding productivity measures. The price index must capture price change for a ‘relevant’ market basket goods, while at the same time controlling for changes in characteristics and/or… Read more