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.

Health Care Expenditures in the National Health Expenditures Accounts and in Gross Domestic Product: A Reconciliation

This paper provides a most detailed reconciliation to date of the National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA), the official estimates of health care spending in the United States from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the estimates of health expenditures that are part of… Read more

Micah Hartman, Robert Kornfeld, Aaron Catlin
WP2010-12
Published
JEL Code(s)None Assigned

The Value of Coverage in the Medicare Advantage Insurance Market

This paper examines the impact of coverage on demand for health insurance in the Medicare Advantage (MA) insurance market. Estimating the effects of coverage on demand poses a challenge for researchers who must must consider both the hundreds of benefits that affect out-of-pocket costs (OOPC) to… Read more

Abe C. Dunn
WP2010-11
Published
JEL Code(s)I10

Comparing the Consistency of Price Parities for Regions of the U.S. in an Economic Approach Framework

Bettina H. Aten, Marshall Reinsdorf
P2010-1
Published
JEL Code(s)C43

International Supply Chains and the Volatility of Trade

The world trade collapsed in the most recent recession. Some analysts have suggested the increasing offshoring of the supply chain, or vertical specialization (VS) trade, can explain the apparent increase in volatility of trade over the business cycle. This paper develops a model of VS trade to… Read more

Benjamin R. Bridgman
WP2010-13
Published
JEL Code(s)F21

Implications of Consumer Heterogeneity on Price Measures for Technology Goods

Using a new dataset on household purchases of personal computers (PCs), we document positive correlations between buyers' incomes and the prices they pay for seemingly identical PCs. These results suggest that firms may be successful at separating the market and charging different prices to… Read more

Adam Shapiro, Ana M. Aizcorbe
WP2010-10
Published
JEL Code(s)E31

The Impact of Competition on Technology Adoption: An Apples-to-PCs Analysis

We study the effect of market structure on a firm's decision to adopt a new technology in the personal computer industry. This industry is unusual because there exists two horizontally segmented retail markets with different degrees of competition: the IBM compatible (or "PC") platform and the… Read more

Adam Copeland, Adam Shapiro
WP2010-9
Published
JEL Code(s)None Assigned

Changing Mix of Medical Care Services: Stylized Facts and Implications for Price Indexes

The utilization of health care services has undergone several important shifts in recent years that have implications for the cost of medical care. We empirically document the presence of these shifts for a broad list of medical conditions and assess the implications for price indexes. Following… Read more

Ana M. Aizcorbe, Nicole Nestoriak
WP2010-8
Published
JEL Code(s)None Assigned

Measuring Health Care Costs of Individuals with Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance in the U.S.: A Comparison of Survey and Claims Data

As the core nationally representative health expenditure survey in the United States, the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) is increasingly being used by statistical agencies to track expenditures by disease. However, while MEPS provides a wealth of data, its small sample size precludes… Read more

Ana M. Aizcorbe, Eli Liebman, Sarah J. Pack, David M. Cutler, Michael E. Chernew, Allison B. Rosen
WP2010-6
Published
JEL Code(s)None Assigned

R&D and Other Intangible Assets in an Input-Output Framework: Experimental Estimates with U.S. Data

The U.S., along with many other countries, plans to adjust official economic statistics in coming years to recognize R&D and several other intangibles as capital assets. We present here experimental estimates of the impact of capitalized intangibles on industry output and industry value… Read more

Carol Robbins, William A. Jolliff, Mary L. Streitwieser
WP2010-7
Published
JEL Code(s)O34

Market Entry and Trade Weighted Import Costs

Trade costs have fallen surprisingly little given the large increase in international trade in the last 50 years. This paper examines whether trade costs are properly measured. I show theoretically that trade weighted measures will underestimate the changes in trade costs when there are fixed… Read more

Benjamin R. Bridgman
WP2010-5
Published
JEL Code(s)E21, F14