Experimental Ultimate Host Economy Statistics for U.S. Direct Investment Abroad

Following international guidelines, BEA statistics on bilateral U.S. direct investment abroad are compiled and presented by immediate partner economy. While this approach is well suited for many purposes, it can lead to difficulty in interpreting direct investment statistics, especially in identifying the economies that are the ultimate destinations, or hosts, of direct investment. BEA’s initial effort to produce U.S. direct investment abroad statistics by ultimate host economy (UHE), described in this paper, focused on producing statistics on equity position by UHE using six different methods to reallocate the equity position by immediate host economy. The methods are implemented using direct investment data reported on BEA’s Quarterly Survey of U.S. Direct Investment Abroad and activities of multinational enterprises data reported on BEA’s Benchmark Survey of U.S. Direct Investment Abroad. The paper concludes that three of the six methods merit further exploration and presents summary country and sector-level results for the selected methods.