National Income and Product Accounts

Commodities, such as motor vehicles, that are purchased byconsumers and are used repeatedly or continuously over a prolonged period. In the NIPAs, purchases of consumer durables are treated as personal consumption expenditures rather than as investment, but they are included in BEA’s fixed assets and consumer durable goods accounts.

See “Laspeyres index” and “Chained-dollarestimates.”

Extensive updates best available source data, including the benchmark input-output accounts; they provide the opportunity tomake definitional, statistical, and presentational changes to the NIPAs; and they may affect estimates extending back for many years. Also referred to as “benchmark revisions” or “comprehensive revisions.”

The total remuneration, both monetary and in kind, payable by employers to employees in return for their work during the period. It consists of wages and salaries and of supplements to wages andsalaries (employer contributions for employee pension and insurance fundsand employer contributions for government social insurance). In theNIPAs, compensation is presented on an accrual basis—that is, it reflects compensation liabilities incurred by the employer in a given period regardless of when the compensation is actually received bythe employee.

A method used by BEA to estimate various components of consumer spending, of investment in equipment and software, and of state and local government spending. The process begins with estimates of the domestic output or domestic sales or shipments of a commodity valued in producers’ prices. Then, estimates of the domestic supply of that commodity—the amount that is available for domestic consumption— are prepared by adding imports and by subtracting exports and inventory change.

An alternative measure of real GNP that provides information on the real purchasing power of the income generated by the production ofgoods and services. It reflects the impact of changes in the prices of traded goods and services as well as changes in production. Command- basis GNP is calculated by deflating both “exports plus income receipts” and “imports plus income payments” by the price index for gross domestic purchases. Thus, it reflects the prices of purchased goods and services, while real GNP reflects the prices of produced goods and services.

An alternative measure of real GDP that provides information on the real purchasing power of the income generated by the production of goods and services. It reflects the impact of changes in the prices of traded goods and services as well as changes in production.Command- basis GDP is calculated by deflating both exports and imports by the price index for gross domestic purchases. Thus, it reflects the prices of purchased goods and services, while real GDP reflects the prices of produced goods and services. In the SNA, the term for this measure is “real gross domestic income.”

The component of gross private domestic investment that measures the change in the physical volume of inventories—additions less withdrawals—owned by private business, valued in average prices ofthe period. Inventories may be in the form of goods ready for sale (finished goods), of goods undergoing production (work in process), or of goods acquired for use in the production process (materials and supplies).

Quantity and price indexes that are based on the linking (chaining) of indexes for consecutive periods to form time series. In the NIPAs, annual changes in the quantities and prices calculated using a Fisher index formula that incorporates weights from 2 adjacent years are used to construct the chain-type indexes. These indexes eliminate the substitution bias found in indexes with unchanging (or “fixed”)weights, and their movements are not affected by the choice of the reference period.