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Methodologies

This page provides links to the methodologies used to prepare BEA's National, Industry, Regional, and International accounts data.

Note: These methodologies are periodically refined to incorporate new and better source data and improved estimating procedures. The refinements are described in articles in BEA's monthly Survey of Current Business (SCB) that present annual or comprehensive revisions to the estimates.

National

NIPA Handbook: Concepts and Methods of the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts

The "NIPA Handbook" begins with introductory chapters that describe the fundamental concepts, definitions, classifications, and accounting framework that underlie the national income and product accounts (NIPAs) of the United States and the general sources and methods that are used to prepare the NIPA estimates.
Modified
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Measuring the Economy: A Primer on GDP and the National Income and Product Accounts

This paper introduces new users to the basics of the U.S. national income and product accounts (NIPAs). It discusses the economic concepts that underlie the NIPAs, and it describes the seven NIPA summary accounts. The Primer also provides a brief overview of the derivation of the NIPA measures and a list of references for further information.
Modified
Published

Updated Summary NIPA Methodologies

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has recently improved its estimates of current-dollar gross domestic product (GDP), current-dollar gross domestic income (GDI), and real GDP as part of the 2023 comprehensive update of the national income and product accounts (NIPAs). The sources of data and the methodologies that are now used to prepare the NIPA estimates are summarized in this report.
Modified
Published

Gross Domestic Product and Gross Domestic Income: Revisions and Source Data

This article analyzes the source data used to prepare the GDP estimates and the GDI estimates according to a set of criteria that reflects the quality, the availability, and the use of the data. This analysis allows for a better understanding of the differences between the source data that underlie the GDP estimates and those that underlie the GDI estimates and illustrates how the incorporation of the increasingly detailed and comprehensive source data leads to revisions to the GDP estimates and to the GDI estimates.

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Taking the Pulse of the Economy: Measuring GDP

This article provides a broad overview of the measurement techniques used in estimating GDP and the national accounts in the United States.
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A Primer on BEA's Government Accounts

This article provides an overview of the government accounts. It describes the basic structure and concepts and provides a broad discussion on how the estimate are prepared. It concludes with a discussion of future directions for BEA’s government accounts.
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MP-1: An Introduction to the National Income and Product Accounts

This paper provides a comprehensive explanation of the conceptual basis and framework of the U.S. national income and product accounts (NIPAs). It describes the structure and purpose of the U.S. economic accounts, discusses the relationship between business and financial accounting and national economic accounting, and presents a derivation of the seven NIPA summary accounts from generalized production, income and outlay, and capital accounts for each sector of the economy.
Published

Housing Services in the National Economic Accounts

Housing services are a component of personal consumption expenditures (PCE), and consequently part of GDP, in the national income and product accounts (NIPAs). The rental value of tenant-occupied housing and the imputed rental value of owner-occupied housing are both part of PCE housing services, reflecting the amount of money tenants spend for the service of shelter and the amount of money owner occupants would have spent had they been renting. Owner-occupied housing is included in PCE because the NIPAs treat the owner-occupant as if it were a rental business, or in other words, a landlord renting to him or herself. That is, BEA imputes a value for the services of owner-occupied housing (space rent) based on the rents charged for similar tenant-occupied housing, and this value is included in GDP as part of personal consumption expenditures. This imputation is necessary in order for GDP to be invariant when housing units shift between tenant occupancy and owner occupancy.
Published

Chained-Dollar Indexes: Issues, Tips on Their Use, and Upcoming Changes

This article discusses the advantages of chain-weighted indexes and the challenges posed by chained dollars, outlines further steps that BEA will be taking to address these issues in the 2003 comprehensive revision of the national income and product accounts (NIPAs), and provides suggestions for using chained dollars in ways that reduce biases and errors in forecasting and other applications where components need to be aggregated. Highlights of this article include the following:

Published

Fixed Assets and Consumer Durable Goods in the United States, 1925-97

This publication presents estimates prepared by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the stocks and depreciation of fixed assets and consumer durable goods and of the investment flows used to derive them.  Specifically, it presents estimates for the United States of the stocks of private and government fixed assets (durable equipment, software, and structures) and consumer durables for 1925–99. It also presents the underlying investment expenditures for most assets for 1901–99.
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A Note on the Impact of Hedonics and Computers on Real GDP

A review of the data on hedonic price indexes and their impact on real GDP growth shows no evidence of an overstatement in the measured decline in computer prices. The hedonic price indexes for computers produce results that are quite robust and that are virtually the same as those produced by a carefully constructed traditional price index for computers.
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Preview: BEA's New Featured Measures of Output and Prices

One major improvement in the upcoming NIPA revision will be the introduction of new featured measures of real output and prices. These measures, which will be chain-type indexes, will provide a more accurate picture of economic activity by allowing for changes in relative prices and in the composition of output over time. To facilitate sectoral trend and current-period analysis, BEA will expand the presentations of its estimates to include the contributions of major components to the growth in real GDP and dollar-denominated series that are calculated from the featured output indexes.

Published

Alternative Measures of Change in Real Output and Prices, Quarterly Estimates of 1959-92

This article presents quarterly estimates of the alternative measures of change in real output and prices that BEA introduced in April 1992.l It also updates the annual estimates for 1988-90 to incorporate the results of the annual revision of the national income and product accounts (NIPA's) in July 1992 and extends the annual estimates to 1991.2 The alternative measures, which supplement BEA's featured fixed-weighted measures, are especially useful for studies of long-term economic growth, for comparisons of business cycles, and for gauging the effect of changes in the economy's relative

Published

Alternative Measures of Change in Real Output and Prices

This article and the one that follows it, "Economic Theory and BEA 's Alternative Quantity and Price Indexes," present results of BEA's work on alternative measures of production and prices. These measures, which are designed to supplement BEA's featured fixed weighted measures, were first described in "Alternative Measures of Real GNP" in the April 1989 Survey of Current Business; in that article, BEA stated that it would develop the alternative measures as part of the next comprehensive revision of the national income and product accounts.

Published

Economic Theory and BEA's Alternative Quantity and Price Indexes

This article describes the index number theory underlying these alternative indexes and discusses the interpretation of them.
Published

Gross Domestic Product as a Measure of U.S. Production

This summary outlines the switch from GNP to GDP as BEA’s featured measure of production during the ninth Comprehensive Revision of the NIPAs (December 1991). It provides details on why the change was made and how GDP and GNP differ conceptually and in dollar-level terms.
Published