U.S. Benchmark Input-Output
Accounts: Data and methods
Comments on “China’s Input-Output Survey and
Its Tabulation Method”
Brian C. Moyer
13th OECD-NBS Workshop on National Accounts
Haikou, China
November 30 – December 4, 2009
www.bea.gov
U.S. I-O Accounts
• Benchmark I-O Accounts
• Based primarily on Economic Census data
• Prepared every five years
• 400 industries and commodities
• Annual I-O Accounts
• Rely heavily on benchmark I-O accounts
• Based on annual survey data
• 65 industries and commodities
www.bea.gov
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Census data supplemented with …
• Annual survey data
• Business expenses data
• Data from the tax authority
• Administrative data
• Trade association data
• Data from other government agencies
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Building the benchmark accounts
• Output by industry and commodity
• Intermediate purchases by industry
• Value added by industry
• Final uses; transportation and trade
margins
• Reconciliation and balancing
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Industry and commodity output
• Industry output
• Establishment based
• Classified by NAICS
• Includes all production activities—primary and
secondary
• Commodity output
Prepared on a “where-ever-made” basis
For example, car repair services include all receipts
for car repair, regardless of whether the service is
performed in the auto repair industry, by gasoline
service stations, or by automotive dealers
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Output by sector
• Agriculture: receipts
• Utilities: receipts
• Manufacturing: shipments
• Trade: margin = sales - cost of goods
• Services: receipts
• Non-profits and auxiliaries: expenses
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Adjustments to Census data
• Non-employers
• Imputations
• Tips
• Misreporting/non-filers
• Sales and excise taxes
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Coverage gaps
Sectors not covered by the Economic
Census
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www.bea.gov
Agriculture
U.S. Postal Service
Rail transportation
Education
Religious organizations
Labor unions
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Make table
COMMODITIES
Mining and
Construction
Manufacturing
Trade and
Transportation
Utilities
Finance,
Insurance, and
Real Estate
Total Industry
Output
Other
Mining and
Construction
INDUSTRIES
Manufacturing
Trade and
Transportation
Utilities
Finance,
Insurance, and
Real Estate
Other
Total Commodity Output
www.bea.gov
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Intermediate purchases
• Input category controls
• Census data on broad groups of commodities
purchased by industries—materials consumed,
legal services, advertising, repair services, rental,
etc.
• Variety of additional data used from other
government agencies, trade associations, etc.
• Detailed intermediate purchases by
industry at the transactions level
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Value added by industry
• Value added = Gross Output –
Intermediate Inputs
• Value added = Compensation +
Gross Operating Surplus +
Taxes on production
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Quality weighting
• Reliability indicators assigned to
components of intermediate inputs and
gross operating surplus by industry—in
most cases, coefficients of variation
• I-O constraints imposed
• Less reliable components of value added
adjust more; more reliable components
adjust less
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Quality-weighted results
Income-based
Combined
Production-based
59,000
60,000
61,000
62,000
63,000
64,000
65,000
66,000
67,000
Value added (Millions of dollars)
www.bea.gov
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Final uses
• Estimated in one of two ways
• Directly from Economic Census data using “class
of customer” data
• Indirectly using commodity-flow method
Consumer purchases = shipments + imports –
exports – intermediate purchases –
government purchases - change in inventories –
investment in equipment + margin +
transportation costs
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Distribution of margins
• Transportation, wholesale trade, and retail
trade output distributed to commodities
based on a variety of data sources
• Transportation: commodity flow survey
• Wholesale trade: product-line sales by type of wholesaler
• Retail trade: product-line sales by type of retailer
• Margin distributed to detailed commodities
based on levels of transactions
www.bea.gov
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Use table
INDUSTRIES
Mining and
Construction
Manufacturing
Trade and
Transportation
Utilities
FINAL USES
Finance,
Insurance, and
Real Estate
Other
Personal
Consumption
Expenditure
Private Fixed
Investment
Change in
Private
Inventories
Net Exports
Government
Consumption
and Investment
Total
Commodity
Output and
Value Added
Mining and
Construction
COMMODITIES
Manufacturing
Trade and
Transportation
Utilities
Finance,
Insurance, and
Real Estate
Other
VALUE ADDED
Compensation
Taxes on
Production and
Imports
Gross
Operating
Surplus
Total Industry Output and
Final Uses
www.bea.gov
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Reconciliation and balancing
• Value added reconciled with Industry
Accounts; final uses reconciled with
National Accounts
• Balancing
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www.bea.gov
Based on RAS procedure—scaling of transactions
High-quality cells are “frozen”
Outputi = Inputsi + Value addedi
Total commodity output = Total industry output
Total final uses = total value added = GDP
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