Director's Blog

A blog post from BEA Director Vipin Arora

An old boss of mine was fond of a BEA product that many of our users don’t know about—regional price parities (RPPs). He said regional price parities are BEA’s most underappreciated statistic. While I love all our products equally—just like I love all my kids equally—I can’t help but agree that the RPPs are a gem that sometimes gets overlooked. I hope you won’t overlook the new RPP data coming Thursday, Dec. 12.

A blog from BEA Director Vipin Arora

BEA’s price index for personal consumption expenditures—the PCE price index—gets a lot of attention when it’s released every month. For good reason: the Federal Reserve and policymakers around the world rely on it as a key inflation gauge. Still, I can’t help comparing it to the quarterback of a football team. Just like the quarterback often seems to be in the spotlight, the same is true for the PCE price index. And just like there are 10 other offensive players on the field who work with the quarterback, we have many other price measures at BEA that complement the PCE price index and work together to paint the economic picture for our country.

A blog from BEA Director Vipin Arora

The first time a friend handed me a Rubik’s Cube I thought it would be easy to solve. I was wrong. BEA’s estimates of businesses’ inventories sometimes remind me of that experience. They seem relatively simple at first, but they turn out to be more complicated than expected. The good news is that, just like we can learn to solve a Rubik’s Cube with a few rules of thumb, we can understand BEA’s estimates of the change in private inventories with some basic principles.

A blog from BEA Director Vipin Arora

When I hear the phrase “personal income,” I think about my paycheck. When we talk about personal income in the context of BEA’s economic statistics, however, it’s my paycheck, your paycheck, your cousin’s paycheck—and much more. In fact, I believe our monthly personal income statistics are the most comprehensive measure of U.S. economic activity available on a monthly basis. They are also a widely used tool for analyzing consumer purchasing power.

A blog from BEA Director Vipin Arora

BEA’s supply-use tables may be the unsung hero of economic accounting.

For many, that description immediately brings to mind images of some well-known superhero sidekicks. Yet when I take a step back and think about the impact of supply-use tables, I am reminded of something else entirely: shipping containers.

A blog from BEA Director Vipin Arora

Every year, usually in January, I feel absolutely committed to getting a better handle on my finances. All I want to understand—not just at the end of the year, but throughout the year—is exactly what is coming in, what is going out, and what I have left over. Yet I can never seem to calculate these “personal profits,” nor how far I am from the mythical financial goals I’m supposed to have. Maybe my struggles are why I find our estimates of corporate profits at BEA so remarkable.

A blog from BEA Director Vipin Arora

Here is a fact that may surprise you: The Bureau of Economic Analysis conducts 17 surveys. Yes, the home of gross domestic product, personal consumption expenditure prices, and the current account is also in the big leagues when it comes to running surveys. Not just any surveys, but some of the most unique ones around—collecting information that ranges from direct investment and the activities of multinational enterprises (AMNEs) to U.S. international trade in services.

A blog post from BEA Director Vipin Arora

At BEA we often highlight the comprehensiveness of our statistics. I like to illustrate using the analogy of my favorite Las Vegas dessert buffet. This buffet has an endless variety of desserts: from apple strudel to upside-down cake, there is something for everyone. I would argue our statistics are comprehensive in the same way—there is something for every data user.

A blog post from BEA Director Vipin Arora

One of the best analogies I’ve ever heard for a balance sheet is that it’s like a selfie—it provides a snapshot at a specific point in time. I guess the difference is that the balance sheet provides a summary of assets and liabilities at that point in time—not some picture where I look lost and confused eating a piece of pizza.

A blog post from BEA Director Vipin Arora

Trade—what Adam Smith described as our intrinsic "propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another"—has helped to make today's world. It is hard to say how long trade has been with us, but certainly since the beginning of recorded history, and likely much longer. One of my favorite examples is beer, which was a very popular beverage in ancient Mesopotamia. As far back as 3500 BCE, there is evidence of Sumerians in the city of Uruk bartering with beer. The Babylonians apparently continued this tradition and brewed many types of beer, grouping them into roughly 20 classifications, which were traded regularly with the Egyptians.