National Income and Product Accounts

The time unit covered by an economic statistic. For example, monthly surveys of retail trade, quarterly estimates of GDP, or annual input- output accounts.

Account 5 of the summary NIPAs. This account presents information on exports and imports associated with foreign trade, income receipts and payments, and current taxes and other transfer payments. This account does not include transactions involving the acquisition or disposition of nonproduced nonfinancial assets nor capital transfers, which are shown in the foreign transactions capital account, nor does it include transactions in financial assets and liabilities.

Account 7 of the summary NIPAs. This account presents information on transactions with foreigners involving the acquisition or disposition of nonproduced nonfinancial assets and on capital transfers.

See “Financial accounts of the United States.”

An index in which the base-period weights are taken from a designated base period and do not change over time. See “Laspeyres index” and “Paasche index.”

Economic accounts prepared by BEA that present estimates (1) of the net stock of fixed assets owned by private businesses and by governments and of the net stock of consumer durable goods owned by households, (2) of the depreciation of those assets, and (3) of the investment flows associated with those assets.

Quantity or price index for an aggregate that is computed as the geometric mean of the corresponding Laspeyres and Paasche quantity or price indexes for that aggregate. One characteristic of these indexes is that the Fisher quantity index for an aggregate multiplied by the Fisher price index for that aggregate equals the relative change in current-dollar expenditures—that is, the ratio of the expenditures of the current period to the expenditures of the previous period.

NIPA industry classification that consists of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) industry “finance and insurance” and of bank and other holding companies in the NAICS industry “management of companies and enterprises.”

Part of the U.S. system of national economic accounts. The financial accounts of the United States, prepared by the U.S. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, record the acquisition of assets throughout the U.S. economy, document the sources of the funds used to acquire those assets, and measure the value of total assets and liabilities. Formerly known as the “flow of funds accounts.”