Industry import matrix

Hello Qiang, The column titles you refer to match the titles of the columns in the exportable Industry Import Matrix from the Industry Accounts section. Unfortunately, the query that generates that table does not work correctly; accordingly, we do not recommend using values from it. In general, an industry can purchase commodities from industries and from institutions, since industries make commodities and institutions, like inventory or government, sell commodities. This report, in principle, would estimate industry purchases of imports, and then allocate those imports to producing industries (the second column) according to the byproducts functions of the industries in that country. While that is the concept behind what is going on, we would not recommend relying too heavily on this table, since the model does not know the commodity byproduct functions of the area(s) from which industries are importing commodities. In addition, even if we did know the commodity byproducts, as we mentioned, the query that generates the export is inaccurate. Regards, IMPLAN Staff

Thanks. Should we just disregard the industry Import table from the "Industry Accounts", or will you be able to revise your queries to generate the correct table? Separately, one can also export an Industry Import csv file from the "Social Accounts". This csv file is an industry by commodity matrix. Is this table generated correctly? Or should it be disregarded too?

Hello Qiang, Updating the query that generates the requested table would require a software release for IMPLAN Pro. Our efforts are currently dedicated to advancing the IMPLAN Online platform; therefore, there are no plans to update the IMPLAN Pro system to correct this particular query issue. Even in the online platform we do not plan to fix and replicate this table because, even if it works “correctly”, it would be working under several grand assumptions, namely: 1. Every other country from which the U.S. imports goods and services has the same by-products matrix as the U.S. (i.e., non-U.S. industries make the same mix of commodities as U.S. industries). 2. Every other country from which the U.S. imports goods and services has the same market-share matrix as the U.S. For example,, suppose that in the U.S., 90% of Other amusement and recreation is provided by the Other amusement and recreation industries sector, 5% is provided by State/Local Government Non-Education, and the remaining 5% is provided by various agriculture sectors. This table would have to assume that every other country behaved the same, which in some cases would not make any sense. The Social Accounts version of this table is fine because we do know how much of each commodity is imported. It is just that we don’t know who (i.e., which sectors and institutions) produced those commodities, which is why we don’t feel comfortable providing the Industry Accounts version of the table. Regards, IMPLAN Staff

Thanks for the clarification. We will stick to the industry x commodity import matrix from the Social Accounts then. Is there a way to identify imported capital goods? Is that buried in the "industry import" file or the "institution import" file or both? In other words, does the "industry import" file include only imported intermediate inputs, or does it also include imported capital goods? Thanks!

Hello Qiang, The "industry import" and the "institution import" files report only intermediate commodity imports. Here is one method that could be used to get estimates: 1. Copy and paste the Capital column (14001) from the IxC Full Detail Accounts into another spreadsheet. 2. Delete the Industry rows, which will be empty. 3. Copy and paste the RPCs into a column alongside the column of Capital purchases of commodities. 4. In the third column, divide the local purchase value by the RPC to get gross Capital purchases of commodities. 5. Subtract the local purchase from the gross purchase to get an estimate of the imported purchase. Regards, IMPLAN Staff

Thanks again for your suggestion. For capital, I exported "Industry Detail SAM Files (CSV Only), Industry Detail, Row Detail" from IxC Social Accounting Matrix and the filtered "14001" as the InstitutionPayments. Is that right? I then applied the RPC as you suggested and got $296 billion as the estimated imported capital goods (see the attached file). The came very close to the $299 billion in the same table that represented the purchase by capital from "Foreign Trade." However, this estimate is quite different from the BEA NIPA tables. In NIPA Table 4.2.5, it says imported capital goods (excluding automotive) in 2013 (the base year of the IMPLAN model I currently) were $559 billion. I understand BEA's numbers have been revised since the release of the 2014 IMPLAN model (2013 model year), but still the discrepancy seems to be quite large. Do you have any thoughts about it? Here are a few follow-up questions: 1. The 2013 model year Implan model shows in "model overview" that "Capital" = $2.75 trillion. This matches the "gross private domestic investment" in NIPA Table 1.1.5 ($2.71 trillion for 2013) very closely. Are the two variables equivalent? Do you know if NIPA's gross private domestic investment includes imported capital goods or not? 2. For 2013, IMPLAN shows that imports = $2.563 trillion, compared to NIPA's $2.769 trillion. Is the $200 billion discrepancy due to data revision by BEA, or are there other explanations for the difference? In other words, were you trying to benchmark the model to this NIPA table at the time?

Hello Qiang, Thank you for your questions. A follow up email has been sent to you. Please let us know if we can provide further information. Regards, IMPLAN Staff