Economic Measurement Seminar - Content Outline

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1. U.S. Financial Accounts
   • Flow matrix
     • Sources
     • Uses
     • interpretation of data
     • Sectors
       • Households and nonprofit organizations
       • Nonfinancial business
       • Governments
   • Instrument categories
     • Instrument tables
     • Discrepancies in the financial accounts
   • Integrated macroeconomic accounts
     • Agencies involved in production and publication
     • Conceptional basis and structure of the accounts
       • SNA methodology
       • Sectors
   • Uses of the financial account
   • As economic indicators of the economy
   • Ratio of household net worth to disposable personal income
   • Ratio of corporate and home equity to disposable personal income

      

      

2. International Statistics and the Balance of Payments
   • BEA International Accounts
   • International Transactions Accounts (ITAs)
     • Recognizing BPM5 and BPM6
     • Balance of payments accounts
       • Conceptual data reported
       • Relationship to economic conditions
     • Current account
       • Goods and services
       • Income
     • Financial account
       • What it measures
     • Classifications of data
     • Importance to understanding the economy
   • International Investment Position (IIP)
     • Conceptual data reported
     • What data tells us

        

3. Measuring Employment
   • Bureau of Labor Statistics
     • Employment Statistics
       • Employment Situation
         • Current Population Survey(CPS), Household Survey
         • Current Employment Statistics (CES),Payroll Survey
         • Differences in definitions/coverage
   • Household survey
     • Survey design and methodology
       • Data collection
       • Unemployment Rate, Demographic detail
       • Seasonal adjustment
       • Sample size, Confidence intervals
       • Data revisions and benchmarking, pop controls
     • Civilian Noninstitutional Population, participation rate
       • Definition (16yrs and greater etc)
     • Labor force, including not in the labor force
       • Concepts (labor force, not in the labor force, discouraged workers)
       • Characteristics
       • Recent trends
     • Employment in household survey
       • Concepts
         • Employed persons (not jobs), Employment-population ratio
       • Characteristics of the employed
         • Demographic Characteristics
         • Involuntary part-time for economic reasons
     • Unemployment
       • Concepts (unemployment, unemployment rate)
       • Characteristics of the unemployed
       • Alternative measures of labor underutilization (U1-U6)
       • Duration of unemployment
       • Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS)

          

4. Measuring Employment
   • Payroll survey (Current Employment Statistics)
     • Survey design and methodology
       • Data collection
       • Estimation methodology
         • Birth/death estimates
       • Seasonal adjustment
         • X12 ARIMA Concurrent seasonal adjustment
         • Impact of Financial Crisis, intervention
       • Data revisions and benchmarking
     • Major uses of CES data
   • Household and payroll survey comparison

      

5. Measuring Inflation
   • Agency collecting and reporting
   • Building blocks of the BLS CPI
     • Weighting: sources and updates
     • Data collection
       • Outlet visits
         • Disaggregation process
         • Sample period
         • Definition of price
       • Housing
         • Rental Equivalence
     • Estimating CPI
       • Stages of estimation
         • Stage 1: Laspeyres/Geometric mean
         • Stage 2: Laspeyres
       • Quality adjustment
       • Seasonal adjustment
   • Comparison of CPI Measures: CPI-U, CPI-W, CPI-E
   • Chained CPI-U
     • Substitution and weighting
     • Chained CPI-U as a cost of living measure

        

        

6. GDP and the National Income and Product Accounts
   • What questions do the NIPAs address?
   • How are the data used?
   • Domestic income and product account (Account 1)
     • Gross domestic income and components
     • Gross domestic product
       • Expenditure categories
         • Shares
     • Relationship between GDP and GDI
   • Income and outlay accounts (Accounts 2-4)
     • Personal income and components
     • Corporate profits and components
   • Foreign transactions account (Account 5)
   • Capital account (Accounts 6 and 7)
     • Domestic saving and investment
     • International financial transactions
       • Current account
       • Capital account
   • Price measures and inflation adjustments (chaining)

      

7. Productivity

• Importance to the economy
• Measures of productivity
  • Labor productivity
  • Multi-factor productivity
• Productivity concepts of output
• Productivity concepts of inputs
• Changes in productivity
• Productivity and costs news release
  • Measures reported
    • Output per hour
    • Compensation per hour
    • Unit labor costs
    • Headline measures
  • Calculating labor productivity and unit labor costs
• Industry labor productivity
  • Importance
• Multifactor productivity
  • Measuring inputs
• Finding the data