Understanding commuters in the SAM
Hi. I'm trying to better understanding how IMPLAN handles earnings by commuters. For concreteness, I'm looking at three models (all 2015): a national model, a model consisting of the District of Columbia, and a model of the 50 US states.
My basic understanding is that commuters are accounted for through trade rows in the employee compensation column of the Social Accounting Matrix, although it's possible even my basic understanding is wrong; if so, please correct me.
If I go to the SAM, in the national model, there's about $22 billion of foreign imports and $0 of domestic imports in the employee compensation column, out of a total of $9.7 trillion. In the DC model, there's $0 of foreign imports and $48 billion of domestic imports, out of $88 billion total (which makes sense since DC has a lot of commuters and is far from national borders). But in the 50 state model, there's $0 of foreign trade and $0 of domestic trade out of $9.6 trillion total.
Could you please explain how earnings by (wages earned by) commuters are handled in IMPLAN models? Thanks!
Was this post helpful?
-
IMPLAN SupportHello Dan, You are correct that commuters are accounted for through trade rows in the Employee Compensation (EC) column of the Social Account Matrix. The amount paid by the EC column to Trade is used to generate a commuting rate, which is then applied to all Employee Compensation impacts. All commuting portions of EC are treated as leakages from the study region and do not generate further impacts. One thing to note is that the values in these cells are not gross values, they are a net. Thus, a 0 does not really mean 0 outflows of money to commuters, but rather that the inflow of money to out-commuters is greater than the outflow of money to in-commuters. There are flows in both directions, but a value will only appear in one direction in the SAM (If the payment from EC to Trade is $0, then there will be a non-zero payment from Trade column to Households. Note that there may be some payments in there anyway due to payments of other types). Please let us know If you have further questions or concerns. Summary Description of Elements of the IxC Social Accounting Matrix http://support.implan.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=294:294&catid=228:228 Regards, IMPLAN Staff0 -
OK, so the values shown in the table are net not gross, but it's the gross values that affect the analysis, right? Are the gross values presented anywhere? Thanks.0
-
IMPLAN SupportDan, The values in the table are net, and the analysis is conducted using a ratio calculated from the net value. Unfortunately, the gross values are not presented anywhere in the data. Regards, IMPLAN Staff0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
3 comments