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.
Measuring “Factoryless” Manufacturing: Evidence from U.S. Surveys
Home Productivity
This paper examines the productivity of home production. I calculate annual home production output and productivity for the United States from 1929 to 2010. Both labor and total factor productivity increased rapidly after World War Two, but slowed after the late 1970s. The household sector is… Read more
Export Mode and Market Entry Costs
This paper provides intangible trade data for an important U.S. export industry during a period when official data are very thin. It examines what modes firms use to export intangible assets. It uses a novel data source that provides very detailed information on export modal choice and market… Read more
Industry-level Output Price Indexes for R&D: An Input-cost Approach with R&D Productivity Adjustment
The expanding recognition of intangible assets in the production of economic output brings renewed attention to difficult measurement issues. Price and quantity measures are needed to incorporate these components of real investment in the national accounts. This paper describes the construction… Read more
Developing a Framework for Decomposing Medical-Care Expenditure Growth: Exploring Issues of Representativeness
Medical care expenditures have been rising rapidly over time and in 2009 health care accounted for 17.9 percent of GDP, but there are many areas where we have an incomplete understanding of spending growth in this sector. This is especially true of the commercial sector, where our primary data… Read more
Implications of Utilization Shifts on Medical-Care Price Measurement
The medical-care sector often experiences changes in medical protocols and technologies that cause shifts in treatments. However, the commonly used medical-care price indexes reported by the BLS hold the mix of medical services .fixed. In contrast, episode expenditure indexes, advocated by many… Read more
Decomposing Medical-Care Expenditure Growth
Medical-care expenditures have been rising rapidly, accounting for almost one-fifth of GDP in 2009. In this study, we assess the sources of the rising medical-care expenditures in the commercial sector. We employ a novel framework for decomposing expenditure growth into four components at the… Read more
A Prototype BEA/BLS Industry‐Level Production Account for the United States
In recent years, much interest has been paid to structural changes at the industry level in the United States economy and their implications for competitiveness. The most‐recent business cycle and subsequent recovery have furthered these interests in understanding the sources of economic growth… Read more
The Effect of the Business Cycle on the Methods Used for Seasonal Adjustment
Trends in Digitally-Enabled Trade in Services
Digitally-enabled services are those for which digital information and communications technologies (ICT) play an important role in facilitating cross-border trade in services. Improvements in ICT technologies and reductions in their costs could be expected to contribute to growth in trade in… Read more