The Effects of Low-Valued Transactions on the Quality of U.S. International Export Estimates, 1994-1998

Charles Mead
Additional contact information
Charles Mead: Bureau of Economic Analysis

BEA Papers from Bureau of Economic Analysis

Abstract: This paper uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM) to examine the effects that a growth of low-valued transactions likely has on the quality of export estimates provided in the U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services (FT-990) series. These transactions, valued at less than $2,500, do not legally require the filing of export declarations. As a result, they are often not captured in the administrative records data used to construct FT-990 estimates. By comparing industry-level estimates created from the ASM to related FT-990 estimates, this paper estimates that the undercounting of low-valued transactions in the FT-990 export series increases by roughly $30 billion over the period of 1994-1997. It also finds that regression analysis provides little insight into the undercounting issue as results are primarily driven by industries whose contributions to total manufacturing exports are small.

JEL-codes: E60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bea.gov/system/files/papers/WP2004-7.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bea:papers:0044

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in BEA Papers from Bureau of Economic Analysis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Andrea Batch (andrea.batch@bea.gov).