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.
Residual Seasonality in GDP and GDI: Findings and Next Steps
This paper presents the results of a component-by-component review of seasonally adjusted estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) and gross domestic income (GDI), two widely followed economic measures published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The goal of the review was to test… Read more
Correcting for the 2007 MEPS Discontinuity in Medical Condition Spending and Treated Prevalence
Under a contract with the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), Altarum has updated estimates of spending by medical condition that were first published in 2009 and that covered the years 1996 through 2005. In this update, data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) were used to allocate… Read more
FDI and the Task Content of Domestic Employment for U.S. Multinationals
Using a unique dataset, we examine how the foreign direct investment activities of U.S. multinational manufacturers are related to the composition of their domestic employment. The analysis is based on a dataset in which Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) firm-level data on the foreign operations… Read more
Net Investment and Stocks of Human Capital in the United States, 1975-2013
This study continues the research initiated in Christian (2010, 2014) on measurement of human capital stocks and investment in the United States. It measures a series of human capital stock and net investment from 1975 to 2013, using the lifetime earnings approach of Jorgenson and Fraumeni (1989… Read more
Allocation of Company Research and Development Expenditures to Industries Using a Tobit Model
This paper uses Census microdata and a regression‐based approach to assign multi‐division firms’ pre‐2008 Research and Development (R&D) expenditures to more than one industry. Since multi‐division firms conduct R&D in more than one industry, assigning R&D to corresponding industries… Read more
Disease-Based Health Care Measures and the Industry Economic Accounts
Adjusting the Measurement of the Output of the Medical Sector for Quality: A Review of the Literature
The Bureau of Economic Analysis recently created new price indexes for health care in its health care satellite account and now faces the problem of how to adjust them for quality. I review the literature on this topic and divide the articles that created quality-adjusted price indexes for… Read more
Characteristics of Special Purpose Entities in Measures of U.S. Direct Investment Abroad
Under international guidelines, official statistics on international trade and investment include transactions within multinational enterprises (MNEs) and positions on foreign direct investment. A complicating factor in the interpretation and understanding of the official statistics is the role… Read more
Headquarter Services in the Global Integration of Production
This study examines knowledge management within multinational enterprises (MNEs) by analyzing whether greater interdependence of production between U.S. parent firms and their foreign subsidiaries increases the provision of headquarter (HQ) services from the home country. The findings suggest… Read more
Structural Transformation, Marketization, and Household Production around the World
We provide evidence on household and market production in 36 countries since 1960. On average the household sector accounts for almost half of total hours worked. As GDP per capita increases, the employment share of household production in total hours worked initially declines and then hardly… Read more