Sectoral Balance Sheets for Nonfinancial Assets

The integrated macroeconomic accounts (IMA), produced jointly by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the Federal Reserve Board (FRB), present a sequence of accounts that relate production, income and saving, capital formation, financial transactions, and asset revaluations to changes in net worth between balance sheets for major sectors of the U.S. economy. These integrated accounts are useful for analyzing sectoral developments in the U.S. economy, for both financial and nonfinancial assets. In this paper I will first provide some background information on the IMAs. Next, I’ll focus on the private sectors’ nonfinancial assets, describing how the balance sheets positions (i.e. net stock), capital account flows, other changes in volume, and revaluation account estimates are prepared. I will also examine recent trends in some of the sectors and then conclude with a discussion on recent improvements and future plans for the IMAs.