Wholesale Trade Definition/Example

Hi David, Thank you for your post. You can actually gleam additional information into why the Wholesale Sector is in the Spending Pattern for Sector 31 by using the Study Area Data. You can view Sector 31's spending pattern or Intermediate Expenditures by going to: Explore > Social Accounts > Balance Sheets>Industry Balance Sheets > Commodity Demand. The Regional Absorption column will tell you the % purchased in the study region. Then by looking at the spending pattern of the Whoelsale Trade sector, you can match up the sectors found in the Wholesale Trade to sector 31. This will tell you what commodities are being stored at the wholesaler. In addition, Sector 31 is not just power generation but also distribution and transmission, the spending pattern will roll the activities of all of those industries together to get the final spending pattern. So while generation may not purchase a large number of items from wholesale/retail the transmission/distribution components may. For example one of the even larger purchases is of turbines and turbine generator units. This may be a sale that would made directly from the producer or these elements may be purchased through a wholesaler. Because the spending patterns are premargined, any item within the spending pattern that is presumed to be purchased by retail or wholesale will be Margined and the sum of all the wholesale Margins for all purchases through a wholesaler will come together to represent the wholesalers portion of the spending pattern. These spending patterns come down from the BEA and represent the aggregate spending of the NAICS codes rolled into that Sector. However if you feel that for your particular firm this is not representative you could certainly use the Analysis-by-Parts methodology to edit that coefficient or eliminate that purchase as seems appropriate based on your firm level information. Thanks!