This page provides links to the methodologies used to prepare BEA's National, Industry, Regional, and International accounts data.

Note: These methodologies are periodically refined to incorporate new and better source data and improved estimating procedures. The refinements are described in articles in BEA's monthly Survey of Current Business (SCB) that present annual or comprehensive revisions to the estimates.


Regional

State Personal Income and Employment: Concepts and Methods

This guide presents the conceptual framework, the data sources, and the statistical methods used by the Regional Income Division of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to estimate personal income and employment for states.
Published

Personal Consumption Expenditures by State: Concepts, Data, and Methods

This guide presents the conceptual framework, data sources, and statistical methods used by the Regional Expenditures and Prices Division of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis to estimate personal consumption expenditures by state.
Published

Local Area Personal Income and Employment: Concepts and Methods

This guide presents the conceptual framework, data sources, and statistical methods used by the Regional Income Division of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to estimate personal income and employment for local areas, that is, for counties, metropolitan statistical areas, and other county aggregates.
Published

Summary of Methodologies: Puerto Rico Gross Domestic Product — Resumen de metodologías: Producto interior bruto de Puerto Rico

This guide summarizes the methods and data sources used by the Regional Product Division of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to estimate annual measures of gross domestic product for Puerto Rico. Esta guía resume los métodos y las fuentes de datos utilizados por la División de Producto Regional del Negociado de Análisis Económico (BEA por sus siglas en inglés) para estimar las medidas anuales del producto interior bruto de Puerto Rico
Published

Regional Price Parities, Real Personal Consumption Expenditures, and Real Personal Income

This article describes the source data and methods used by the Bureau of Economic Analysis to estimate regional price parities (RPPs) and for regional estimates of real personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and real personal income. RPPs and real personal income are estimated annually for states, metropolitan statistical areas, the metropolitan and nonmetropolitan portions of states, and the combined nonmetropolitan portion of the United States. Real PCE is estimated annually for states.
Published

Summary of Methodologies: Gross Domestic Product for American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands

This guide summarizes the methods and data sources used by the Regional Product Division of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to estimate annual measures of gross domestic product for four U.S. territories: American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Published

A Primer on Local Area Gross Domestic Product Methodology

On December 12, 2019, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released the first official gross domestic product (GDP) by county statistics. This article provides readers with a description of the GDP framework, source data, and methodology used to prepare BEA's official GDP by county estimates. The article is divided into three main sections. The first section explains GDP concepts, definitions, and source data. The next two sections describe the estimation methods used to measure GDP by county, by breaking down the methodology into key components.
Published

Gross Domestic Product by State Estimation Methodology

This volume presents the conceptual framework, the data sources, and the statistical methodologies used by the Regional Product Division of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to estimate gross domestic product (GDP) by industry for all U.S. states for 1963–2016. GDP by state is the state equivalent of GDP for the nation.
Published

Regional Input-Output Modeling System (RIMS II) User's Guide

The Regional Input-Output Modeling System (RIMS II) user's guide provides practical advice on the appropriate use of the RIMS II model as well as an explanation of the Input-Output framework and RIMS II model assumptions.
Modified
Published