Toward U.S. Trade in Services by State: Exploratory Results of a Survey-Based Approach for Selected Services and Intellectual Property

BEA produces statistics on U.S. international trade in services at the national level and is working to produce state-level estimates. This paper presents an initial look at responses to BEA survey questions asking companies to report the top three states or territories, and the associated shares, for their sales to (purchases from) foreign persons. The estimation of trade in services by state presents both conceptual and practical challenges. This paper presents information about the data, estimation method, and results for a subset of services, referred to as “selected services (excluding financial and insurance services).” This paper is the first installment of a BEA initiative to produce a complete set of statistics on trade in services by state; future installments will cover other service types.