Papers

In 2007, I estimate that musicians and recording studios created original songs, including recorded performances, with an estimated value of $7.8 billion. These songs were sold on CDs in 2008 and will be played on the radio, on television and at live concerts for decades to come. Because of… Read more

In 2007, I estimate that playwrights, artists, photographers and designers created miscellaneous artwork worth $3.3 billion. By category, theatrical play scripts were $1.4 billion, greeting card designs were $0.5 billion and commercial stock photography was $1.4 billion. Taken individually, each… Read more

In 2007, I estimate that studios spent $20.0 billion producing original theatrical movies. These movies were shown in theaters in 2008 and will be sold on DVD and broadcast on television for decades to come. Because of their long working life, the international guidelines for national accounts… Read more

U.S. health care expenditures as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) reached 17.9 percent in 2011. That share will continue to grow significantly, according to recent studies by the Congressional Budget Office. This trend has raised questions about the sources of this growth, whether the… Read more

Relative price levels for all the U.S. states and metropolitan regions were estimated in Aten, Figueroa and Martin (2011, 2012, forthcoming 2013) 1 . We use the term RPPs and relative price levels interchangeably since no currency conversion is necessary within the U.S. This is similar to the… Read more

This paper presents a preliminary methodology and estimates for an experimental set of data on nominal personal consumption expenditures (PCE) for eight categories of goods, seven categories of services, and net expenditures of nonprofit institutions serving households (NPISHs) for fifty states… Read more

This paper suggests a new semi-parametric multivariate approach to seasonal adjustment. The primary innovation is to use a large dimensional factor model of cross section dependence to estimate the trend component in the seasonal decomposition of each time series. Because the trend component is… Read more

Macro estimates of household income and expenditures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis measure aggregate and per capita averages, but provide no information on the distribution of income, which is important in the measurement of economic well-being. Micro estimates of household income and… Read more

We construct a disease-based price index for Medicare beneficiaries using data from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey from 2001-2005. We create the index by modeling total health-care expenditure as a function of the diagnoses of 27 illnesses. The coefficients from the regression are used… Read more

We study the degree to which greater physician concentration leads to higher service prices charged by physicians in the commercially insured medical-care market. Using a database of physicians throughout the entire United States, we construct physician-firm concentration measures based on… Read more