University Impact Analysis Expense Assignment

Hi Claire, That is a great question and exactly the concern that we were think of in regards to your post as we were reading through it. This is unfortunately a bit of a laborious process, but hopefully the attached spreadsheet will help you through it. You are absolutely correct that the wholesale Sector is generic, and thus is not able to associate to a particular type of purchase, and also correct that applying it all just to computer manufacturing is not correct. What you will need to do is calculate out the Margin splits for each item that is purchased through a wholesaler, and if you are assuming no retail production, you will also need to adjust the values so that the portion of the Margin assigned to the retailer is adjusted down into the wholesale, transport and production elements of the Margin. So what you will need to do is use the Excel table to match your Sector to the Sector column in the table and then split the value of the purchase across the appropriate listed Sectors. As an example, if you were splitting a purchase of Sector 2 Grain Farming, the table reads: Sector MarginSector MarginValue 2 2 0.388031239 2 319 0.193879404 2 320 0 2 321 0 2 322 0 2 323 0 2 324 0.280330548 2 325 0 2 326 0 2 327 0 2 328 0 2 329 0 2 330 0 2 331 0 2 332 0.003904831 2 333 0.058118416 2 334 0.040410461 2 335 0.0353251 2 337 0 So 38.8% of the expenditure value would go to Sector 2, 19.4% to wholesale (319), 28% to retail grocery (324), ~13.8% to various transport. If you wanted to remove the retailer, you would remove the retailer portion and redistribute or normalize the remaining Margin coefficients. Sector MarginSector MarginValue 2 2 0.539179812 2 319 0.269400631 2 320 2 321 2 322 2 323 2 324 2 325 2 326 2 327 2 328 2 329 2 330 2 331 2 332 0.005425867 2 333 0.080757097 2 334 0.056151419 2 335 0.049085174 2 337 You will then sum the wholesale, and transport components of all the Sectors you know are purchased into a final spending pattern result that will include an aggregate value of wholesale purchases for all commodities. If you are having trouble with the mapping are you using our Help>Sector Search feature? The Sector search can be sorted by clicking the Industry Code column. You can then scroll down through the industry codes until you find the codes you are interested in examining. The associated NAICS descriptions will show you the types of Activities that will report into each category. This is often helpful in determining Sectors. We also have an Excel based version we can point you too if you would like. You will also want to be sure that all your Events in the imported spending pattern have Local Purchase Percentage set to SAM Model Value, this will allow the Model to make estimates of local purchasing ability of all commodities in your spending pattern. [attachment=487]2012CommonMargins.xlsx[/attachment] Please let me know if this addresses your concern or if you have any additional questions.

Hello, I have a very similar question. I have information on specific commodities that are purchased from wholesalers. Can I use this process to get the impacts for each commodity? 1)Create a commodity change 2)Apply margins 3)Edit margins - zero out the retail margin and normalize My further question here is about transport. I assume there are two legs of transport: between the producer and the wholesaler and between the wholesaler and the retailer. Based on the steps I've outlined above, it seems that I will be assuming that all of the transportation expenses are accrued in the first leg (between the producer and wholesaler). Does this seem reasonable / do you have any better way to go about this? Thank you! Cathy

Hi Cathy, Yes, we would certainly recommend zeroing out the retail margin in this case. However, whether you want to renormalize across all margin sectors or not is not as straightforward. Do you think the wholesaler and transporters really get a larger cut when there's no retailer? When a retailer is involved, the transportation margins involve both legs - so the transportation margin probably would not increase when there is no retailer since there is actually less transportation needed. Perhaps it is more likely that the producer gets to keep the difference - or splits the difference with the wholesaler. For this type of question you basically need to exercise what you think is the best option, and then be sure to state how you handled it in your results.