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.
An Updated Analysis of the Roles of Cost per Case and Treated Prevalence in Health Spending Growth
This report presents data, methods, and findings from a study of the roles of treated disease prevalence (treated prevalence) and cost per person treated (cost per case) on the rate of increase in real per capita health spending by the civilian non-institutional population from 1996 through 2014… Read more
Imputing Rents to Owner-Occupied Housing by Directly Modelling Their Distribution
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) makes the official estimates of the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs). Two key aggregates in these accounts are the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) and the personal income of households. The rental value of owner-occupied housing… Read more
Effect of Mode Choice and Respondent Characteristics on Data Quality: Profiling Respondents to BEA's Annual Survey of Foreign Direct Investment in the United States
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) conducts the Annual Survey of Foreign Direct Investment in the United States, a mandatory enterprise level survey that collects information on the finances and operations of foreign-owned U.S. businesses. Respondents submit data by mail, facsimile, and… Read more
Supplemental Poverty Measure: A Comparison of Geographic Adjustments with Regional Price Parities vs. Median Rents from the American Community Survey: An Update
Official poverty statistics are used in the United States to evaluate economic well-being at the national level, and to distribute federal anti-poverty funds across states and urban areas. However, these statistics are based on thresholds or poverty lines that do not take into account geographic… Read more
Rental equivalence estimates of national and regional housing expenditures
The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) series published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) includes estimates of rent expenditures and owner-occupied housing expenditures for the benchmark year 2001. The main data sources are the Residential Financial Survey (RFS), carried out in… Read more
Exploratory Estimates of U.S. International Services by Mode of Supply
This paper presents exploratory estimates of U.S. international supply of services by mode. There is interest in international services by mode partly because government trade negotiators structure agreements around these modes. The estimates are based on statistics on trade in services… Read more
A Comparison of Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics Disease-Price Indexes
National health expenditures and health care prices are routinely measured according to type of service, such as hospital care, physician care, or prescription drugs. The official National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA) maintained by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS),… Read more
Engines of Leisure
U.S. time use patterns have changed over the last century in ways that appear inconsistent. Leisure has increased with income but has increased most for the poorest. I develop a unified model that treats leisure as an economic activity. Leisure services are produced using capital, like… Read more
Adjusting Health Expenditures for Inflation: A Review of Measures for Health Services Research in the United States
Objective. To provide guidance on selecting the most appropriate price index for adjusting health expenditures or costs for inflation.
Data Sources. Major price index series produced by federal statistical agencies.
Study Design. We compare the key characteristics of each index… Read more
Depreciation of Business R&D Capital
We develop a forward-looking profit model to estimate the depreciation rates of business R&D capital. By using data from Compustat, BEA, and NSF between 1987 and 2008, and the newly developed model, we estimate both constant and time-varying industry-specific R&D depreciation rates. The… Read more