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.
Survey Data Collection Over the Internet at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
This paper summarizes the progress the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has made in converting its paper-based survey data collection system to an electronic reporting system that collects data via the Internet. The paper describes the pilot program that resulted in BEA's Automated Survey… Read more
Working with Chain-type Aggregates: A Few Tricks
Globalization and Multinational Companies: What Are the Questions, and How Well Are We Doing in Answering Them?
This paper looks at the U.S. experience and uses it as a benchmark for identifying the key questions that are being asked about the role and influence of MNC's and the types of statistics that are required to answer those questions. The paper goes on to assess whether the U.S. statistics that… Read more
Measuring Globalization: The Experience of the United States of America
This paper outlines BEA's program of data collection on the operations of U.S. parent companies, their foreign affiliates, and U.S. affiliates of foreign companies. It also describes a number of related activities that organize the data in ways useful for analysis, derive additional,… Read more
Selected Issues on the Treatment of Nonperforming Loans in Macroeconomic Statistics
This paper was prepared for the IMF’s Electronic Discussion Group on the Treatment of Nonperforming Loans in Macroeconomic Statistics. Due to the linkages between loan recognition and interest accrual, and between loan writeoffs and operating surplus, decisions that are reached regarding the… Read more
A Computational Routine for Disaggregating Industry Margin Data to Estimate Product Margin Rates
Retail industry product margin rates are used to estimate the retail output proportion of final consumption commodities. The Census Bureau collects data on industry margin rates, but it does not collect product margin rate data. To estimate retail industry-… Read more
Revisions, Rationality, and Turning Points in GDP
The results presented in this paper are in line with the conclusions of past BEA studies of GDP revisions; they supplement the findings reported in Fixler and Grimm (2002). Some evidence that the revisions are predicable was found for the current quarterly estimates of GDP and final sales, but… Read more
Valuing the Direct Investment Position in U.S. Economic Accounts
This paper discusses the methodologies employed in the U.S. international economic accounts, in valuing direct investment in prices of the current period. Under international standards, all of the components of the international investment position should reflect current period prices, rather… Read more
Exploring the Borderline Between Direct Investment and Other Types of Investment: The U.S. Treatment
This paper discusses the classification in the U.S. international economic accounts of borderline cases between direct investment and other types of investment. In the fifth edition of the Balance of Payments Manual (BPM5), one of the key steps forward was in the provision of uniform guidelines… Read more
An Analysis of the Composition of Intermediate Inputs by Industry
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by industry accounts for the United States provide industry estimates of value added, gross output, and intermediate inputs based, in part, on data from the benchmark and annual input-output (I-O) accounts for the United States. The GDP by industry data provide a… Read more