An Introduction to the National Income and Product Accounts Methodology Papers: U.S. National Income and Product Accounts U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE Carlos M. Gutierrez Secretary ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS ADMINISTRATION Cynthia A. Glassman Under Secretary for Economic Affairs BUREAU OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS J. Steven Landefeld Director Rosemary D. Marcuss Deputy Director September 2007 www.bea.gov Acknowledgments Part I, “Overview of the NIPAs,” was prepared by Stephanie H. McCulla, an Economist in the National Income and Wealth Division at the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Part II, “Underlying Economic Accounts”; Part III, “Economic Accounts for Sectors”; and Part IV, “NIPA Summary Accounts”; were prepared by Charles Ian Mead, an Economist in the Office of the Director at BEA. Brent R. Moulton, Associate Director for National Economic Accounts at BEA, provided overall supervision for the preparation of this project. Preface This paper provides a comprehensive explanation of the conceptual basis and framework of the U.S. national income and product accounts (NIPAs). It describes the structure and purpose of the U.S. economic accounts, discusses the relationship between business and financial accounting and national economic accounting, and presents a derivation of the seven NIPA summary accounts from generalized production, income and outlay, and capital accounts for each sector of the economy. This paper updates and replaces “An Introduction to National Economic Accounting” (MP1), which was published in March 1985. Comments about this paper are invited. Please contact the BEA National Economic Accounts Directorate, 1441 L St. NW, BE–6, Washington, DC 20230 or by e-mail at <
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