Papers

This paper outlines BEA's program of data collection on the operations of U.S. parent companies, their foreign affiliates, and U.S. affiliates of foreign companies.  It also describes a number of related activities that organize the data in ways useful for analysis, derive additional,… Read more

This paper was prepared for the IMF’s Electronic Discussion Group on the Treatment of Nonperforming Loans in Macroeconomic Statistics. Due to the linkages between loan recognition and interest accrual, and between loan writeoffs and operating surplus, decisions that are reached regarding the… Read more

Retail industry product margin rates are used to estimate the retail output proportion of final consumption commodities. The Census Bureau collects data on industry margin rates, but it does not collect product margin rate data. To estimate retail industry-… Read more

The results presented in this paper are in line with the conclusions of past BEA studies of GDP revisions; they supplement the findings reported in Fixler and Grimm (2002). Some evidence that the revisions are predicable was found for the current quarterly estimates of GDP and final sales, but… Read more

This paper discusses the methodologies employed in the U.S. international economic accounts, in valuing direct investment in prices of the current period. Under international standards, all of the components of the international investment position should reflect current period prices, rather… Read more

This paper discusses the classification in the U.S. international economic accounts of borderline cases between direct investment and other types of investment. In the fifth edition of the Balance of Payments Manual (BPM5), one of the key steps forward was in the provision of uniform guidelines… Read more

Since the United Nations introduced the nonsymmetrical make-use input-output (I-O) tables in 1968, there have been on-going discussions about ways to translate them into symmetric I-O tables. The discussions have focused on secondary products that cause the asymmetry between industries and… Read more

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by industry accounts for the United States provide industry estimates of value added, gross output, and intermediate inputs based, in part, on data from the benchmark and annual input-output (I-O) accounts for the United States. The GDP by industry data provide a… Read more

The timeliness of the U.S. input-output (I-O) accounts is a major concern for policymakers and industry analysts, as well as academics. In response, the Bureau of Economic Analysis initiated research in 2001 to identify, develop and implement an estimating method for producing more timely and… Read more

In the U.S. national income and product accounts (NIPA's), most of the types of goods in the investment category "information processing (IP) equipment and software" have experienced rapidly changing technology and are thus candidates for inclusion in the new economy. The NIPA price indexes for… Read more