Formulary measures for the U.S. current account: Accounting for transactions attributable to special purpose entities of multinational enterprises

Abstract

Consistent with the residence concept of BPM6 and the SNA2008, the U.S. current account reflects international transactions within multinational enterprises (MNEs), including international transactions conducted with special purpose entities (SPEs). To better understand the role of SPEs in economic accounting statistics, international guidelines on foreign direct investment (FDI) positions and transactions recommend that compilers distinguish resident SPEs for inbound FDI and encourage compilers to offer supplemental measures on non-resident SPEs for outbound FDI. While U.S. economic accounting statistics are not significantly affected by resident SPEs, recent empirical evidence calls into question the extent to which U.S. statistics may be affected by non-resident SPEs (Lipsey 2009, 2010). In this paper, I explore formulary apportionment as an accounting treatment for transactions related to outbound FDI in the U.S. current account in order to better understand the effects of non-resident SPEs on U.S. economic accounting statistics. The empirical results reveal that formulary apportionment significantly reduces total U.S. exports of services and total U.S. imports of services but the combined effect on U.S. net exports is negligible with no noticeable effect on U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). Likewise, formulary apportionment significantly reduces total U.S. income receipts, which reduces U.S. gross national product by 1.1 percent. The results imply that transactions attributable to non-resident SPEs do not affect U.S. net exports or U.S. GDP. Likewise, nonresident SPEs appear to play a larger role in income-based measures of production than in expenditure-based measures of production.