Director's Blog
A blog created by the director.
A blog from BEA Director Vipin Arora
A consistent theme throughout the history of BEA and its forerunners—driven by significant public and policymaker demand—is the expansion of our regional statistics. This expansion began with the publication of our first annual statistics on state income payments in 1939, and has continued since.
A blog from BEA Director Vipin Arora
In the alphabet soup of BEA acronyms, you’ve probably heard of GDP (gross domestic product). You might have heard of PCE (personal consumption expenditures, a fancy word for consumer spending). And you may have come across DPI (disposal personal income). But have you ever heard of RIMS II?
A blog post from BEA Director Vipin Arora
An old boss of mine was fond of a BEA product that many of our users don’t know about—regional price parities (RPPs). He said regional price parities are BEA’s most underappreciated statistic. While I love all our products equally—just like I love all my kids equally—I can’t help but agree that the RPPs are a gem that sometimes gets overlooked. I hope you won’t overlook the new RPP data coming Thursday, Dec. 12.
A blog from BEA Director Vipin Arora
BEA’s price index for personal consumption expenditures—the PCE price index—gets a lot of attention when it’s released every month. For good reason: the Federal Reserve and policymakers around the world rely on it as a key inflation gauge. Still, I can’t help comparing it to the quarterback of a football team. Just like the quarterback often seems to be in the spotlight, the same is true for the PCE price index. And just like there are 10 other offensive players on the field who work with the quarterback, we have many other price measures at BEA that complement the PCE price index and work together to paint the economic picture for our country.
A blog from BEA Director Vipin Arora
The first time a friend handed me a Rubik’s Cube I thought it would be easy to solve. I was wrong. BEA’s estimates of businesses’ inventories sometimes remind me of that experience. They seem relatively simple at first, but they turn out to be more complicated than expected. The good news is that, just like we can learn to solve a Rubik’s Cube with a few rules of thumb, we can understand BEA’s estimates of the change in private inventories with some basic principles.
A blog from BEA Director Vipin Arora
When I hear the phrase “personal income,” I think about my paycheck. When we talk about personal income in the context of BEA’s economic statistics, however, it’s my paycheck, your paycheck, your cousin’s paycheck—and much more. In fact, I believe our monthly personal income statistics are the most comprehensive measure of U.S. economic activity available on a monthly basis. They are also a widely used tool for analyzing consumer purchasing power.
A blog from BEA Director Vipin Arora
BEA’s supply-use tables may be the unsung hero of economic accounting.
For many, that description immediately brings to mind images of some well-known superhero sidekicks. Yet when I take a step back and think about the impact of supply-use tables, I am reminded of something else entirely: shipping containers.
A blog from BEA Director Vipin Arora
Here is a fact that may surprise you: The Bureau of Economic Analysis conducts 17 surveys. Yes, the home of gross domestic product, personal consumption expenditure prices, and the current account is also in the big leagues when it comes to running surveys. Not just any surveys, but some of the most unique ones around—collecting information that ranges from direct investment and the activities of multinational enterprises (AMNEs) to U.S. international trade in services.
A blog post from BEA Director Vipin Arora
At BEA we often highlight the comprehensiveness of our statistics. I like to illustrate using the analogy of my favorite Las Vegas dessert buffet. This buffet has an endless variety of desserts: from apple strudel to upside-down cake, there is something for everyone. I would argue our statistics are comprehensive in the same way—there is something for every data user.