BEA National Account Enhancements -- Health Care Satellite Acct, Fungible Crypto in SNA/BOP, Data Science (11.18.22)

Question

At the BEA Advisory Committee meeting, BEA staff provided updates on three topics, followed by discussants:

1) Health Care Satellite Account
 
Health Care Satellite Account https://www.bea.gov/system/files/2022-11/Dunn.pdf
Health Care Prices in BEA's Official Statistics https://www.bea.gov/system/files/2022-11/Kornfeld.pdf

HCSA’s goal: improve understanding of health care spending in the United States

• Redefine output and spending into more meaningful units
o Output is the treatment of a condition (e.g., diabetes) not individual goods and services (e.g., prescription drug or doctor’s office visit)

• Example
o Output = number of patients treated for diabetes
o Expenditures = spending on the treatment of diabetes
o Price = average spending per treated patient for diabetes

Discussants:
David Cutler https://www.bea.gov/system/files/2022-11/Cutler-BEA-11-22.pdf
Louise Sheiner https://www.bea.gov/system/files/2022-11/Sheiner-BEA-Discussion-November-18-22.pdf

2) Fungible Crypto in System of National Accounts and Balance of Payments

Updates to the SNA and BOP Conceptual Manuals and Recording of Fungible Crypto Assets https://www.bea.gov/system/files/2022-11/Farello-Derrick.pdf   

Purpose of the Updates
•Introduce new measures to both the standard (“required”) and supplemental (“optional”) items in the reporting frameworks
•Clarify current guidance
•Harmonize terminology across manuals
•Provide guidance for communicating to the public

Fungible crypto assets are digital representations of value that rely on cryptography and distributed ledger technology
o Fungible because they are divisible and not unique
o We now make the distinction because of the emergence of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are addressed in a separate guidance note

Background: F.18 The Recording of Fungible Crypto Assets in Macroeconomic Statistics https://www.bea.gov/system/files/2022-11/F18_Guidance_Note_Fungible_Crypto_Assets_Oct22.pdf
 
3) Data Science at BEA

Data Science @ BEA https://www.bea.gov/system/files/2022-11/Quistorff-Lyndaker_0.pdf

• Update on modernizing BEA’s Data Science strategy and implementation
• Data Science Spotlights:
o Improved linking of firms to outside datasets for Direct Investment
o Building a Python library to easily use data from BEA’s API
o Forecasting Regional QCEW

Discussant: Louise Sheiner https://www.bea.gov/system/files/2022-11/coronado-bea-discussion.pdf