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.

Integrated Industry‐Level Production Account for the United States: Intellectual Property Products and the 2007 NAICS

Ongoing structural change in the U.S. economy due, in part, to globalization, the spread of information and communications technology, and the Great Recession, has reinforced the need for an up‐to‐date decomposition of aggregate GDP to industry‐level sources of growth. This approach, typically… Read more

Steven Rosenthal, Mathew Russell, Jon D. Samuels, Erich H. Strassner, Lisa Usher
Published
JEL Code(s)None Assigned

Offshoring, Sourcing Substitution Bias and the Measurement of US Import Prices, Real GDP and Productivity

The decade ending in 2007 was a period of rapid sourcing substitution for manufactured goods consumed in the US. Imports were substituted for local sourcing, and patterns of supply for imports changed to give a large role to new producers in emerging economies. The change in the price paid by… Read more

Marshall Reinsdorf, Robert Yuskavage
WP2014-5
Published
JEL Code(s)None Assigned

Introduction to Measuring Wealth and Financial Intermediation and their links to the Real Economy

This introductory chapter to the NBER/CRIW conference volume that is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press contains an overview of the papers that were presented at a meeting of the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth in November 2010 and that are included in the conference… Read more

Charles Hulten, Marshall Reinsdorf
WP2014-6
Published
JEL Code(s)None Assigned

Health Insurance and the Demand for Medical Care: Instrumental Variable Estimates Using Health Insurer Claims Data

This paper takes a different approach to estimating demand for medical care that uses the negotiated prices between insurers and providers as an instrument. The instrument is viewed as a textbook “cost shifting” instrument that impacts plan offerings, but is unobserved by consumers. The paper… Read more

Abe C. Dunn
WP2014-3
Last Updated
Published
JEL Code(s)I10

Defining Disease Episodes and the Effects on the Components of Expenditure Growth

To better understand productivity and inflation in the health sector, health economists have advocated tracking the cost of treatment by disease over time. However, there are several methods for measuring the cost of treatment, and little work has been done to understand how different approaches… Read more

Abe C. Dunn, Eli Liebman, Lindsey Rittmueller, Adam Shapiro
WP2014-4
Published
JEL Code(s)I10

Supplemental Poverty Measure: A Comparison of Geographic Adjustments with Regional Price Parities vs. Median Rents from the American Community Survey

One of the innovations of the Supplemental Poverty Measure is to make adjustments in the official poverty threshold to account for geographic price level differences, particularly for differences in the cost of shelter as measured by rents. A more recent initiative is to estimate thresholds that… Read more

Bettina H. Aten, Eric B. Figueroa, Troy Martin, Trudi J. Renwick
WP2014-7
Published
JEL Code(s)C43

Domestic Trade in Services in Regional Input-Output Models

Lack of statistical data on interregional trade in services often leads regional input-output (I-O) models to rely on assumptions about the degree to which services are imported from other regions. One advantage of using an I-O model is that it provides the flexibility to tailor the basic model… Read more

Ledia Guci, Charles Ian Mead
WP2014-2
Published
JEL Code(s)R12

University Contribution Studies Using Input-Output Analysis

Many universities report results based on input-output (I-O) analysis to promote the contribution that they make to a regional economy. How these results are obtained is not always clear. Nor are they always based on best practices. This paper presents best practices when using a regional I-O… Read more

Zoë O. Ambargis, Charles Ian Mead, Stanislaw J. Rzeznik
WP2014-1
Published
JEL Code(s)E01

State and Local Government Defined Benefit Pension Plans: Estimates of Liabilities and Employer Normal Costs by State, 2000-2011

In the 2013 comprehensive revision of the National Income and Product Accounts, BEA introduced a new accrual treatment of defined benefit pension plans based on actuarial estimates of liabilities and normal costs. Accrual accounting is the preferred method for compiling national accounts because… Read more

WP2013-16
Published
JEL Code(s)G20

Calculating Disease-Based Medical Care Expenditure Indexes for Medicare Beneficiaries: A Comparison of Method and Data Choices

Disease-based medical care expenditure indexes are currently of interest to measurement economists and have been the subject of several recent papers. These papers, however, produced widely different results for medical care inflation and also varied in the datasets and methods used, making… Read more

Anne E. Hall, Tina Highfill
WP2013-15
Last Updated
Published
JEL Code(s)None Assigned