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.
Alternative Measures of Household Income: BEA Personal Income, CPS Money Income and Beyond
This paper has been prepared for presentation to the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee (FESAC) on December 14, 2004. It represents work in progress and does not represent any agency's final positions on issues addressed. The FESAC is a Federal Advisory Committee sponsored jointly by… Read more
Using Efficiency Tests to Reduce Revisions in Panel Data: The Case of Wage and Salary Estimates for U.S. States
This paper studies the preliminary estimates of state wage and salary growth produced by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), investigating whether they may be improved using basic efficiency tests. State wage and salary growth can be thought of as the sum of two components, an aggregate… Read more
Recent U.S. Progress in Collecting Data on Derivatives
This note briefly summarizes work conducted in the United States over the past several years to design a report form that collects comprehensive data on U.S. positions and transactions in derivative financial instruments.
News, Noise, and Estimates of the "True" Unobserved State of the Economy
Which provides a better estimates of the growth rate of “true” U.S. output, gross domestic product (GDP) or gross domestic income (GDI)? Past work has assumed the idiosyncratic variation in each estimate is pure noise, taking greater variability to imply lower reliability. We develop models that… Read more
The Effects of Low-Valued Transactions on the Quality of U.S. International Export Estimates, 1994-1998
This paper uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM) to examine the effects that a growth of low-valued transactions likely has on the quality of export estimates provided in the U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services (FT-990) series. These transactions,… Read more
Offshore Outsourcing and Multinational Companies
"Offshoring" and the U.S. Balance of Payments
Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts for the United States: Draft SNA-USA
This paper presents integrated macroeconomic accounts for the United States for the period 1985 to 2002 and discusses issues related to their construction and use. Specifically, it focuses on tying together the national income and product accounts (NIPAs) and international transaction accounts (… Read more