Search Results

Some of the frameworks and concepts of macroeconomics are deployed to explore the place of financial markets in the US economy, and various important questions are introduced (such as how interest rates are determined) that are elaborated upon in later chapters. The first section of the chapter looks at real assets and financial claims – balance sheets for the US economy, the US international investment position, and distribution of financial assets. In the second section – A framework for macroeconomic analysis of flows – one of the main tools of analysis used is the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), which extend the accounting concepts developed in Ch. 1 to the economy as a whole; these accounts are combined with the Flow of Funds (FOF) accounts into a framework for describing supply and demand in the securities markets. The third section discusses the rate of interest. The framework presented in the second section is then used to discuss the effects of monetary and fiscal policy and of inflation, particularly on interest rates and securities prices.

The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, in its National Health Accounts (NHA), and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), an agency of the Department of Commerce, in its National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), each publish national data on expenditures for health care. The NHA show the interaction between health care services and funding sources and how these relationships change over time, while the NIPA provide an up-to-date, overall view of domestic and national production, its distribution, and its use as shown by the interrelated receipts and expenditures of producers, consumers, investors, government, and the foreign suppliers and customers of the United States. In an effort to improve the consistency of these two sets of estimates, HCFA and BEA are engaged in a joint program to reconcile the health care estimates in the NHA and in the NIPA. This chapter focuses on the reconciliation of hospital care and physician services.

This chapter provides a comparison of the National Time Accountings (NTAs) to the U.S. national economic accounts, that is, the National Income and Products Accounts (NIPAs). Like the NIPAs, which are a comprehensive measure of market activity and its components, the NTAs are designed as a comprehensive measure of total utility and its parts. The NTAs avoid the long-standing problem of many well-being indicators that put a subjective value, or weight, on the various indicators used to develop an index of well-being. Although the NTAs are not a double-entry accounting system, they can be imagined as being combined with a set of household production accounts to produce a set of input-output accounts. If the U-index or net affect indexes change slowly, then the NTAs probably do not need to be constructed or released in as timely a manner as the NIPAs.

The National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs), produced by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), provide policy makers with critical information on current economic conditions and their creation has been recognized as a signature accomplishment. Despite their value for many purposes, the limitations of the NIPAs also have long been recognized. The existing accounts offer a framework on which a set of expanded economic accounts designed to meet additional needs can be built. There are multiple possible objectives for such an expanded set of accounts. First, expanded accounts might provide more complete measures of investment in capital—broadly speaking, any stock that contributes to the nation’s future productive capacity—that include the household investments in education that are so critically important in a knowledge economy. Second, expanded accounts could provide more accurate measures of output and productivity in key sectors such as education, health and government. Third, expanded accounts could contribute to the assessment of trends in societal welfare or well-being. Information on how the output of a society is distributed could be an important part of this.

This chapter examines the evidence on corporate financing patterns from 1970 to 1989 to address two issues. It first presents the conventional view of Japanese companies' financial structures. Next, the chapter utilises the National Income Accounts and Flow of Funds to provide a description of the pattern of company finance from within the stated period. The chapter then considers the implications of the statistical evidence for the general view that Japan is a bank-based financial system and looks at other firms' relations with banks. Finally, it considers aspects of the main bank relationship and examines other features of corporate control, particularly the keiretsu relationship as well as interlocking shareholding.

There are two federal data series that refer to U.S. household expenditures. One uses the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE), and the other personal consumption expenditures (PCE). Weights for the Consumer Price Index (CPI) are based on CE data, but some suggest that PCE be used instead. Researchers have tried to reconcile differences in scope and definitions in the CE and PCE. We review these differences along with aggregate estimates resulting from accounting for them. However, to compare trends in CE and PCE over time, a concordance of comparable items in both surveys is desirable. Independent exercises by federal agencies have created three different concordances. Here we discuss one such concordance and highlight similarities and differences in the CE and PCE along with trends in ratios of aggregate CE and PCE over 1992 to 2010. Aggregate expenditures and ratios of CE to PCE are produced for durables, non-durables, and services Results suggest that nondurables are most alike for the CE and PCE. Regarding trends over time and focusing on comparable goods and services only, CE to PCE ratios have steadily decreased. The greatest decline in CE to PCE ratios is for durables, and those for comparable services dropped the least.