Updated summary NIPA methodologies - Business Situation - national income and product accounts - Illustration

Survey of Current Business, Oct, 2002

(1.) BEA has prepared a series of papers that provide detailed descriptions of NIPA concepts and methodologies and that are subject to periodic improvements, which are typically introduced as part of annual and comprehensive revisions; these improvements are described in the articles in the SURVEY OF CURRENT BUSINESS that cover these revisions. For more information, see appendix B at the back of this issue.

(2.) Eugene P. Seskin and Stephanie H. McCulla, "Annual Revision of the National Income and Product Accounts," SURVEY 82 (August 2002): 7-34.

(3.) For additional details on the release schedule for the NIPA estimates, go to BEA's Web site at <www.bea.gov>, click on "Methodologies," and under "National programs," see "A Guide to the NIPA's."

(4.) For a few components, the final quarterly estimates are based on newly available source data that replace judgmental trends.

(5.) For additional information on the commodity-flow method, see U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Personal Consumption Expenditures, Methodology Paper No. 6 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990): 31-34 and GNP: An Overview of Source Data and Estimating Methods, Methodology Paper No. 4 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1987): 16-17.

(6.) For additional information, see Personal Consumption Expenditures, 41-54; and GNP: An Overview, 17.

(7.) For additional information on the perpetual-inventory method, see U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Fixed Reproducible Tangible Wealth in the United States, 1925-94 (Washington, DC: GPO, August 1999): M-3--M-36; and GNP: An Overview, 17-18.

(8.) For additional information and an example of the fiscal year analysis method, see U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Government Transactions, Methodology Paper No. 5 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1988): 19-20.

(9.) See U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, The Balance of Payments of the United States: Concepts, Data Sources, and Estimating Procedures (Washington, DC GPO, 1990). The methodologies described in this publication are subject to periodic improvements, which are typically introduced as part of the annual revision of the ITA's; these improvements are described in the SURVEY articles that cover the annual ITA revisions, most recently in Christopher L. Bach, "Annual Revision of the U.S. International Transactions Accounts, 1993-2001," SURVEY 82 (July 2002): 33-10.

(10.) These adjustments are described in U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Foreign Transactions, Methodology Paper No. 3 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1987): 15-25.

(11.) For additional information on the calculation of real GDP, go to BEA's Web site at <www.bea.gov>, click on "Methodologies," and under "National programs," see "A Guide to the NIPA's."

(12.) For the real estimates, the distinction between annual and quarterly methodologies is far less important than it is for the current-dollar estimates. For the relatively few cases in which the annual and quarterly source data differ, the major differences are noted in the entry.