BEA’s Government Accounts: Facing New Challenges Brian C. Moyer Chief, Government Division National Economic Accounts Data Users’ Conference April 13, 2007

2 BEA’s Government Accounts  Government current receipts and expenditures  Government consumption expenditures and gross investment  Other related statistics  Expenditures and gross investment by function  Fixed assets  Federal budget translation  International submissions—OECD and IMF

3 Improvements to the Accounts  Recent improvements  “Government as producer”  Estimates of real expenditures and gross investment by function  Planned improvements for 2008 Example: Private-sector treatment of insurance for government-owned business enterprises

4 National Flood Insurance Corporation Published Proposed Current Surplus

5 Looking beyond 2008 …  Improved measures of real government output— education and health services  Return to government fixed assets  “Real-time” data on state and local governments  Government enterprise sectoring

6 Education and Health Services  Purpose: To develop improved measures of real education and health services that reflect productivity change  Health  Initial research on health services prices  Investigating price and quantity indicators based on data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services  Education  Initial research on quality-adjusted volume indicators  First steps toward a human capital satellite account

7 Real Output, K-12 Education

8 Return to Government Fixed Assets  Purpose: To develop measures of services of government fixed assets that will support long-term efforts to measure productivity of the government sector  BEA working with BLS to develop price and quantity indicators for government capital services  The key issue: What is the most appropriate rate-of- return for government fixed assets?

9 Alternative Rates-of-Return Billions of 2000 Dollars

10 Real-time Data on S&L Governments  Purpose: To develop improved measures of quarterly S&L expenditures  Annual data available from the Census Bureau’s Government Finance Survey  Pilot study in place to assess the availability of quarterly expenditures data for a few local governments

11 S&L Expenditures: A hypothetical example Total consumption expenditures Compensation and CFC Intermediate Goods and Services Less: Sales to Other Sectors Total consumption expenditures Compensation and CFC Intermediate Goods and Services Less: Sales to Other Sectors

12 Real-time Data on S&L Governments  Purpose: To develop improved measures of quarterly S&L expenditures  Annual data available from the Census Bureau’s Government Finance Survey  Pilot study in place to assess the availability of quarterly expenditures data for a few local governments

13 Enterprise Sectoring  Purpose: To modernize the treatment of government enterprises by separating market from non-market institutional units and transactions  Federal enterprises relatively straightforward  Difficult data issues for S&L enterprises  Large number of units  Difficulty identifying separate institutional units  Statistics on transactions—receipts, expenses, income receipts on assets, and subsidies—are often commingled