INTRODUCTION:
Welcome to IMPLAN and economic impact modeling! This article will guide you through what you need in order to run your first analysis. Good news! You only need to know a few things to get going. While it is true that the more data and information you have, the more accurate your results will be, sometimes you are only given small pieces of information.
BASIC INDUSTRY ANALYSIS:
Setting up your analysis will follow the same steps we all learned in grade school: who, what, where, when, and why. We call this framing. The most basic type of analysis in IMPLAN is an Industry Event for a new business. Here is what you will need to know.
WHO: Which Industry is being affected? Is this a cotton farm or a medical device manufacturing company? Is there new construction involved or just new operations of a business? Construction and operations should always be analyzed and reported individually. There are 546 Sectors in IMPLAN to choose from. Pick the one that most closely matches the business that you want to impact.
WHAT: What is the Value of the change? Is it 100 new jobs or $100M in new Sales? To analyze an Industry Event in IMPLAN, you will need to have at least one (but you can input all four) of the following: Employment, Employee Compensation (fully loaded payroll), Proprietor Income, or Output. Output differs by business type:
- Industries that do not hold inventory
- Output = sales (revenues)
- Manufacturing
- Output = sales plus/minus change in inventory
- Retail and Wholesale
- Output = gross margin (or Marginal Revenue)
WHERE: IMPLAN data is available for Congressional Districts, Zip Codes, counties, Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), states, and the nation. Answering this should be determined by the Region where your impact is happening and in which regional economy you want to measure the impact.
WHEN: Each analysis in IMPLAN needs to have an associated Dollar Year. This is usually the same as the year in which the economic event you are analyzing occurred or is expected to occur. The default in IMPLAN will be the current year.
Each Region in IMPLAN is associated with a Data Year. The default Data Year will be the most recent Data Year available in IMPLAN which is appropriate for current and future projects. Historical Data Years are also available in IMPLAN when analyzing a past economic event.
WHY: The last question answers why this Event is being analyzed in the first place. It is often a good idea to start with the why question to help guide you through the other required steps, but sometimes it is also useful to think about this throughout your analysis all the way to reporting the results.
RELATED ARTICLES:
The Basics of Framing Your Analysis
Written December 19, 2019
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