This page provides access to papers and presentations prepared by BEA staff. Abstracts are presented in HTML format; complete papers are in PDF format with selected tables in XLS format. The views expressed in these papers are solely those of the authors and not necessarily those of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis or the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Developing a Framework for Decomposing Medical-Care Expenditure Growth: Exploring Issues of Representativeness

Medical care expenditures have been rising rapidly over time and in 2009 health care accounted for 17.9 percent of GDP, but there are many areas where we have an incomplete understanding of spending growth in this sector. This is especially true of the commercial sector, where our primary data… Read more

Abe C. Dunn, Eli Liebman, Adam Shapiro
WP2012-8
Published
JEL Code(s)I10

Implications of Utilization Shifts on Medical-Care Price Measurement

The medical-care sector often experiences changes in medical protocols and technologies that cause shifts in treatments. However, the commonly used medical-care price indexes reported by the BLS hold the mix of medical services .fixed. In contrast, episode expenditure indexes, advocated by many… Read more

Abe C. Dunn, Eli Liebman, Adam Shapiro
WP2012-9
Last Updated
Published
JEL Code(s)I10

Decomposing Medical-Care Expenditure Growth

Medical-care expenditures have been rising rapidly, accounting for almost one-fifth of GDP in 2009. In this study, we assess the sources of the rising medical-care expenditures in the commercial sector. We employ a novel framework for decomposing expenditure growth into four components at the… Read more

Abe C. Dunn, Eli Liebman, Adam Shapiro
WP2012-10
Last Updated
Published
JEL Code(s)I10

A Prototype BEA/BLS Industry‐Level Production Account for the United States

In recent years, much interest has been paid to structural changes at the industry level in the United States economy and their implications for competitiveness. The most‐recent business cycle and subsequent recovery have furthered these interests in understanding the sources of economic growth… Read more

Susan Fleck, Steven Rosenthal, Mathew Russell, Erich H. Strassner, Lisa Usher
Published
JEL Code(s)None Assigned

The Effect of the Business Cycle on the Methods Used for Seasonal Adjustment

Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy, Brent R. Moulton
P2012-2
Published
JEL Code(s)None Assigned

Trends in Digitally-Enabled Trade in Services

Digitally-enabled services are those for which digital information and communications technologies (ICT) play an important role in facilitating cross-border trade in services. Improvements in ICT technologies and reductions in their costs could be expected to contribute to growth in trade in… Read more

Maria Borga, Jennifer Bruner
Last Updated
Published
JEL Code(s)None Assigned

Enhancing Public Understanding of Revisions to Preliminary Estimates: The U.S. Post-Recession Perspective on Revisions

Brent R. Moulton, Dennis J. Fixler
P2012-1
Published
JEL Code(s)None Assigned

Household Consumption Expenditures for Medical Care: An Alternate Presentation

 

 
Ana M. Aizcorbe, Eli Liebman, David M. Cutler, Allison B. Rosen
Published
JEL Code(s)None Assigned

Comparing Commercial Systems for Characterizing Episodes of Care

Payers are increasingly using episodes of care to measure and reward efficiency in health care. Much attention has been paid to the effects of different rules for assigning episodes to providers, but little to how individual costs are assigned to episodes. In this paper, we studied the extent to… Read more

Allison B. Rosen, Eli Liebman, Ana M. Aizcorbe, David M. Cutler
WP2012-7
Published
JEL Code(s)None Assigned

Physician Market Power and Medical-Care Expenditures

We study the degree to which greater physician market power via consolidation leads to higher service prices in the commercially insured medical-care market. We also examine whether these potentially higher service prices translate into different levels of physician service utilization. We find… Read more

Abe C. Dunn, Adam Shapiro
WP2012-6
Published
JEL Code(s)I10