National Income and Product Accounts

See “Capital account.”

Supplemental accounts that expand the analytical capacity of the main system of accounts by focusing on a particular aspect of economic activity. Satellite accounts are linked to the main accounts but have greater flexibility in providing more detailed information or in using alternative definitions, concepts, and accounting conventions. For example, BEA’s travel and tourism satellite account provides detailed information on output, supply, demand, and employment for those industries.

The value added by retailers in the chain of distribution of a commodity from the producer to the final purchaser. Sometimes referred to as “retail markup.”

A method used by BEA to prepare nonbenchmark-year and quarterly estimates for most components of personal consumption expenditures (PCE) for goods. The retail control method provides the indicator series that are used in interpolating and extrapolating the estimates for most PCE goods components, and it provides the aggregate indicator of the period-to-period change for this group of components.

Consists of foreign residents who conduct transactions with U.S. residents.

Component of residential fixed investment that consists of equipment (such as furniture and household appliances) that is purchased by landlords and included in the rental to tenants.

Prepared by BEA, these accounts consist of the estimates of GDP by state and by metropolitan area and of personal income by state and by local area.

In the derivation of quantity or price estimates, the period (usually a year) for which an index is set equal to 100, and a real value is set equal to the current-dollar value.

BEA’s featured measure of domestic production. It measures U.S. production relative to the reference year, adjusted for inflation. It is calculated as a chain-type quantity index and is also presented in chained dollars.

A NIPA alternative measure of changes in U.S. production relative to the reference year, adjusted for inflation. It is calculated by deflating gross domestic income (the sum of incomes earned and costs incurred in the production of GDP) using the GDP price index as the deflator, and thus it is conceptually equivalent to real GDP. In contrast, in the SNA, real GDI is a measure of the purchasing power of the total incomes generated by domestic production, adjusting for changes in the terms of trade; in the NIPAs, this measure is termed “command-basis GDP.”