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8.1 Introduction Research and development (R&D) has long been of interest to researchers and policymakers because of its potential impact on economic growth. However, its impact is difficult to determine from the current measures in the national income and product accounts (NIPAs) and the standard growth-accounting model. The NIPAs and the growth-accounting model do not treat R&D as investment and thus underestimate R&D's contribution to national savings, the country's stock of knowledge, and the economy as a whole. Moreover, with the current measures, the links between R&D and technical changes and between technical changes and growth in gross domestic product are uncertain. This paper treats R&D as investment rather than current expenditure. This treatment of R&D expenditures is a step toward producing more comprehensive and accurate measures of gross domestic product (GDP), gross domestic income (GDI), and national savings. This treatment also allows for better identification of the variables that are important to a 275

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This article provides a broad overview of the measurement techniques used in estimating GDP and the national accounts in the United States. In the United States, the GDP and the national accounts estimates are fundamentally based on detailed economic census data and other information that is available only once every five years. The challenge lies in developing a framework and methods that take these economic census data and combine them using a mosaic of monthly, quarterly, and annual economic indicators to produce quarterly and annual GDP estimates. One problem is that the other economic indicators that are used to extrapolate GDP in between the five-year economic census data -- such as retail sales, housing starts, and manufacturers shipments of capital goods -- are often collected for purposes other than estimating GDP and may embody definitions that differ from those used in the national accounts. Another problem is some data are simply not available for the earlier estimates in the reporting process. For the initial monthly estimates of GDP, data on about 25 percent of GDP -- especially in the service sector -- are not available, and so these sectors of the economy are estimated based on past trends and whatever related data are available. The initial monthly GDP estimates based on these extrapolations are revised as more complete data become available In producing the national accounts estimates, the Bureau of Economic Analysis attempts to strike a balance between accuracy and timeliness so that the estimates can be used to monitor real overall economic growth and inflation, as well as major sectors of interest.

This paper presents a satellite account where households are treated as production units. It extends previous work that treats consumer durables as investment and that values nonmarket household production activities such as cooking, cleaning, and childcare. Services from consumer durables and government capital related to household production are also valued. In constructing the updated accounts, this paper incorporates new time use data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) and the harmonized time use data from the Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS). This paper also discusses and incorporates recommendations made by the U.S. National Academies panel on nonmarket accounts.