Papers
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.
Competition among Spatially Differentiated Firms: An Estimator with an Application to Cement
We develop an estimator for models of competition among spatially differentiated firms. In contrast to existing methods (e.g., Houde (2009)), the estimator has flexible data requirements and is implementable with data that are observed at any level of aggregation. Further, the estimator is the… Read more
Input-Output Models for Impact Analysis: Suggestions for Practitioners Using RIMS II Multipliers
Input-output models, when applied correctly, can be powerful tools for estimating the economy-wide effects of an initial change in economic activity. To effectively use these models, analysts must collect detailed information about the project or program under study. Analysts also need to be… Read more
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… Read more
Is GDP or GDI a better measure of output? A statistical approach.
Gross domestic product (GDP) and gross domestic income (GDI) are in theory estimates of the same concept, namely economic production over a defined span of time and space. Yet the two measures are compiled using different source data, and the two measures often give different indications of the… Read more
Alternative Price Indexes for Medical Care: Evidence from the MEPS Survey
Spending on medical care is a large and growing component of GDP. There are well-known measurement problems that are estimated to overstate inflation and understate real growth for this sector by as much as 1-1/ 2 percentage points per year. Because of its size, this would translate into an… Read more
Drug Innovations and Welfare Measures Computed from Market Demand: The Case of Anti-Cholesterol Drugs
The pharmaceutical industry is characterized as having substantial investment in R&D and a large number of new product introductions, which poses special problems for price measurement caused by the quality of drug products changing over time. This paper applies recent demand estimation… Read more
A Reconciliation of Health Care Expenditures in the National Health Expenditure Accounts and in Gross Domestic Product
Medical Care Price Indexes for Patients with Employer-Provided Insurance: Nationally-Representative Estimates from MarketScan Data
OBJECTIVE: Commonly observed shifts in the utilization of medical care services to treat diseases may pose problems for official price indexes at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that do not account for service shifts. We examine how these shifts may lead to different price estimates than… Read more
Measuring the Nation's Economy: An Industry Perspective | A Primer on BEA's Industry Accounts (2010)
This paper introduces new users to the basics of the U.S. industry economic accounts. It provides an overview of each of BEA’s industry accounts and how they may be used to answer a variety of questions about the U.S. economy, industry activity, and the flow of goods and services throughout the… Read more