This paper discusses the methodologies employed in the U.S. international economic accounts, in valuing direct investment in prices of the current period. Under international standards, all of the components of the international investment position should reflect current period prices, rather...

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...

This paper describes the U.S. data collection system for trade in services, discusses improvements that have been made in it over roughly the last 15 years, and identifies some of the improvement tasks that remain. The discussion covers both data on trade in the conventional sense of exchanges...

The timeliness of the U.S. input-output (I-O) accounts is a major concern for policymakers and industry analysts, as well as academics. In response, the Bureau of Economic Analysis initiated research in 2001 to identify, develop and implement an estimating method for producing more timely and...

Most economists conclude that the U.S. regions have converged in per capita earnings during a majority of the 20th century, though controversy abounds over the methods employed to test for such convergence. Using time-series techniques, this paper finds evidence that the U.S. regions have...

Retail industry product margin rates are used to estimate the retail output proportion of final consumption commodities. The Census Bureau collects data on industry margin rates, but it does not collect product margin rate data. To estimate retail industry-by-commodity output, industry margin...

Retail industry product margin rates are used to estimate the retail output proportion of final consumption commodities. The Census Bureau collects data on industry margin rates, but it does not collect product margin rate data. To estimate retail industry-by-commodity output, industry margin...