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.
Transatlantic Trade in Services: Investigating Bilateral Asymmetries in EU-U.S. Trade Statistics
The European Union (EU) and the United States are the biggest economic partners in international trade in services in the world, with total bilateral trade in 2015 exceeding EUR 400 billion according to the data reported by Eurostat. The United States accounted for close to 30 percent of total… Read more
Measuring the "Free" Digital Economy within the GDP and Productivity Accounts
We develop an experimental methodology that values "free" digital content through the lens of a production account and is consistent with the framework of the national accounts. We build upon the work in Nakamura, et al. (2016) by combining marketing- and advertising-supported content and find… Read more
An Updated Analysis of the Roles of Cost per Case and Treated Prevalence in Health Spending Growth
This report presents data, methods, and findings from a study of the roles of treated disease prevalence (treated prevalence) and cost per person treated (cost per case) on the rate of increase in real per capita health spending by the civilian non-institutional population from 1996 through 2014… Read more
Imputing Rents to Owner-Occupied Housing by Directly Modelling Their Distribution
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) makes the official estimates of the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs). Two key aggregates in these accounts are the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) and the personal income of households. The rental value of owner-occupied housing… Read more
Effect of Mode Choice and Respondent Characteristics on Data Quality: Profiling Respondents to BEA's Annual Survey of Foreign Direct Investment in the United States
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) conducts the Annual Survey of Foreign Direct Investment in the United States, a mandatory enterprise level survey that collects information on the finances and operations of foreign-owned U.S. businesses. Respondents submit data by mail, facsimile, and… Read more
Supplemental Poverty Measure: A Comparison of Geographic Adjustments with Regional Price Parities vs. Median Rents from the American Community Survey: An Update
Official poverty statistics are used in the United States to evaluate economic well-being at the national level, and to distribute federal anti-poverty funds across states and urban areas. However, these statistics are based on thresholds or poverty lines that do not take into account geographic… Read more
Rental equivalence estimates of national and regional housing expenditures
The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) series published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) includes estimates of rent expenditures and owner-occupied housing expenditures for the benchmark year 2001. The main data sources are the Residential Financial Survey (RFS), carried out in… Read more
Exploratory Estimates of U.S. International Services by Mode of Supply
This paper presents exploratory estimates of U.S. international supply of services by mode. There is interest in international services by mode partly because government trade negotiators structure agreements around these modes. The estimates are based on statistics on trade in services… Read more
A Comparison of Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics Disease-Price Indexes
National health expenditures and health care prices are routinely measured according to type of service, such as hospital care, physician care, or prescription drugs. The official National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA) maintained by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS),… Read more
Engines of Leisure
U.S. time use patterns have changed over the last century in ways that appear inconsistent. Leisure has increased with income but has increased most for the poorest. I develop a unified model that treats leisure as an economic activity. Leisure services are produced using capital, like… Read more