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.
The National Income and Product Accounts
Patterns of Production and Employment by U.S. Multinational Companies
Based on a note by Raymond J. Mataloni, Jr.
An Overview of U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis Statistics on Multinational Companies
Statistics on multinational companies may be grouped into two broad categories: (1) those that pertain to cross-border transactions and positions between direct investors and direct investment enterprises (balance of payments and direct investment position data), and (2) those that pertain to… Read more
Volunteer Output and the National Accounts: An Empirical Analysis
Volunteer activities attempt to promote a sense of community unity and ownership. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor, approximately 59 million people participated in volunteer activities in the year beginning September 2001. Although utility is derived from… Read more
Current Consumption and Future Income Growth: Synthetic Panel Evidence
Using group means computed from twenty years of high quality survey data, I show a strong and robust relation between households' consumption growth and subsequent realizations of their income growth, including realizations as distant as six years later. The relation appears in multiple… Read more
International Fragmentation of Production and the Intrafirm Trade of U.S. Multinational Companies
An aspect of globalization that has attracted increased attention in recent years is trade in intermediate inputs associated with the fragmentation of production across national borders. This trade takes the form of intrafirm transactions when production stages in different countries are… Read more
The Reliability of the State Personal Income Estimates
A new study by BEA finds that the quarterly estimates of state personal income were reliable indicators in the period 1991-2001. That is, they were generally successful in indicating whether a state’s economy was expanding or contracting, whether a state’s economy was accelerating or… Read more
NIPA Corporate Profits and Reported Earnings: A Comparison and Measurement Issues
The users of the national income and product accounts (NIPAs) often compare the growth rates of NIPA profit measures with those of other publicly available measures of reported earnings, such as Standard & Poor's 500 earnings. Differences between the NIPA profit measures and the other… Read more
Trade in Goods Within Multinational Companies: Survey-Based Data and Findings for the United States of America
This paper discusses the data on U.S. intrafirm trade in goods collected in BEA's surveys of the operations of U.S. multinational firms and foreign-owned U.S. affiliates. It also examines patterns that emerge from the data, with a particular focus on the intrafirm-trade shares of U.S. exports… Read more
New Quality Adjusted Price Indexes for Nonresidential Structures
Accurate, quality adjusted prices for nonresidential structures are necessary for a good understanding of the functioning of the economy. In order to improve its estimates of nonresidential structures’ prices, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has developed new quality adjusted price indexes… Read more