Papers

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

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

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

According to the estimates in this paper, R&D is a significant contributor to economic growth. Over the forty-year period studied, 1961-2000, returns to R&D capital accounted for 10 percent of growth in real GDP. Treating R&D as an investment raises the national savings rate by two… 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

The method of using regressions of prices on characteristics to adjust for quality changes has grown dramatically in the United States statistical agencies in recent years. For example, currently 18 percent of the final expenditures in gross domestic product is deflated using price indexes that… Read more