BEA's strategic plan for 2001-2005

Survey of Current Business, May, 2002

I have sketched the new architecture for the production account of the NIPA's as an illustration of the conceptual work to be done. Similar issues arise for the income and expenditure account, as well as the capital formation and wealth accounts, which should be considered together. The first of these can be considered within BEA, but involves important practical issues, such as reconciling commodity flow and expenditure data on personal consumption expenditures. The second involves agreement on a common architecture with the FRB and implementation of a joint program to produce wealth accounts on the same schedule as the annual NIPA's.

A further development of this architecture, foreshadowed by SNA93, would add satellite accounting systems modeled in the integrated system. For example, nonmarket activity related to time use could be compiled in the form of production, income and expenditure, and wealth accounts. Barbara Fraumeni and I have done this in a series of papers, focusing on investment and saving in the form of human capital. (Reprinted in my book, Postwar U.S. Economic Growth, The MIT Press, 1995, pp. 273-388.) This would provide guidance to statistical agencies outside BEA for developing satellite systems consistent with the NIPA's.

The idea that national accounting is a field that has become isolated from the rest of economics can now be laid to rest. There are many exciting problems that lie ahead in developing a new architecture for the national accounts, and many of these will require the skills in economics that have been developed by the BEA staff. Members of the staff will find enthusiastic support from the academic research community with interests in economic measurement. Economists are on the verge of creating a new way of measuring and understanding our new economy.

Robert J. Gordon

Stanley G. Harris Professor in the Social Sciences, Northwestern University

BEA has made much progress. I like the cooperation that is occurring between government and academic economists. The U.S. leads the world in quality-adjusted prices. I also like the speed-up that is occurring in GPO-by-industry estimates. My priorities include a regular publication of reconciliations of various government estimates, particularly between the NIPA's and the flow of funds accounts. Other reconciliations should include the CPI and PCE deflators, GPO by industry and corresponding BLS estimates of productivity and output, and the index of industrial production and the NIPA's. I would like to see the publication of quarterly real capital stock estimates, and I want better investment deflators. The use of scanner data should lead to improved CPI estimates. There are problems with some matched-model estimates. Price indexes for nonresidential construction are also in need of improvement. Finally, I would like to see more historical research; for example, why have the 1929-48 growth rates been revised up?

Marina v.N. Whitman

Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy, University of Michigan