Several changes were made to portfolio income. First, BEA changed its method of estimating interest received or paid on foreign bonds, U.S. corporate bonds, and U.S. agency bonds to a method based on current yield rather than the yield to maturity used previously. The change removed the impact of unrealized capital gains and losses from the income estimates. Second, BEA introduced more detailed measures of current yields for foreign securities, U.S. corporate bonds, U.S. agency issues, and U.S. Treasury bonds drawn directly from the U.S. Treasury Department’s annual and benchmark surveys; previously, yields were based on broad market baskets of securities. Third, BEA changed the method for estimating interest payments on U.S. Treasury bonds by substitution of newly available information from the U.S. Treasury Department’s international annual and benchmark surveys for the previously used information from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Monthly Statement of Public Debt; the newly available information provided a more precise statistical measure of coupon interest payments to foreigners and eliminated the need to make critical assumptions. Estimates were revised for 2001-2006.
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