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.
News, Noise, and Estimates of the "True" Unobserved State of the Economy
Which provides a better estimates of the growth rate of “true” U.S. output, gross domestic product (GDP) or gross domestic income (GDI)? Past work has assumed the idiosyncratic variation in each estimate is pure noise, taking greater variability to imply lower reliability. We develop models that… Read more
The Effects of Low-Valued Transactions on the Quality of U.S. International Export Estimates, 1994-1998
This paper uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM) to examine the effects that a growth of low-valued transactions likely has on the quality of export estimates provided in the U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services (FT-990) series. These transactions,… Read more
Offshore Outsourcing and Multinational Companies
"Offshoring" and the U.S. Balance of Payments
Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts for the United States: Draft SNA-USA
This paper presents integrated macroeconomic accounts for the United States for the period 1985 to 2002 and discusses issues related to their construction and use. Specifically, it focuses on tying together the national income and product accounts (NIPAs) and international transaction accounts (… Read more
The National Income and Product Accounts
Patterns of Production and Employment by U.S. Multinational Companies
Based on a note by Raymond J. Mataloni, Jr.
An Overview of U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis Statistics on Multinational Companies
Statistics on multinational companies may be grouped into two broad categories: (1) those that pertain to cross-border transactions and positions between direct investors and direct investment enterprises (balance of payments and direct investment position data), and (2) those that pertain to… Read more
Volunteer Output and the National Accounts: An Empirical Analysis
Volunteer activities attempt to promote a sense of community unity and ownership. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor, approximately 59 million people participated in volunteer activities in the year beginning September 2001. Although utility is derived from… Read more