SASEBEA Interface Engine

The SASEBEA interface engine enables SAS users to retrieve time series data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) economic statistics website (www.bea.gov/data). This website offers access to economic statistics data at the industry, regional, national, and international levels.

The industry economic accounts provide a detailed view of the interrelationships between US producers and users. They are used extensively by both policymakers and businesses to understand industry interactions, productivity trends, and the changing structure of the US economy.

The regional economic accounts describe the geographic distribution of US economic activity and growth. The estimates of gross domestic product by state and of state and local personal income, and the accompanying details, help provide a consistent framework for analyzing and comparing individual state and local economies.

The national economic accounts include summary measures such as gross domestic product, corporate profits, personal income and spending, and personal saving.

The international economic accounts provide information about trade in goods and services, such as balance of payments and the balance of trade, investment income, and government and financial flows. These accounts measure the value of US international assets and liabilities and direct investment by multinational enterprises (MNEs). These direct investment data are used to assess the role that business enterprises play in the global economy.

The international transactions data include exports and imports of goods and services, receipts, and payments of income, and international transactions in financial assets and liabilities. The international trade in services data give detailed annual statistics for trade in services and for services provided through affiliates. The US international investment position accounts contain the end-of-period value of accumulated stocks of US financial assets and liabilities.

The input-output accounts focus on the interrelationships between US producers and users.

The SASEBEA interface engine uses the LIBNAME statement to enable you to download the BEA’s online economic data from the website at the following root URL:

https://apps.bea.gov/api/

It also enables you to specify which time series you want to retrieve, by specifying the data set name and the parameters defined for that data set. You choose the time range of the retrieved data by specifying a list of years. You can then use the SAS DATA step to perform further subsetting, retrieve the data, and store the resulting time series in a SAS data set and in a CAS table (if desired).

You can view the catalog of available BEA databases on the web page at the following URL:

https://apps.bea.gov/api/data?UserID=<Your-36character-key>&method=GETDATASETLIST

Every user has a unique user ID key, which the user can obtain by registering at

https://apps.bea.gov/api/signup/

The SASEBEA interface engine supports Linux X64 (LAX) and Windows.

Although the SASEBEA engine uses the BEA Data Retrieval API, the interface is not endorsed or certified by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. By using the SASEBEA interface engine, you are agreeing to comply with the terms of service, which are described when you sign up for your user ID key.

To get started using the SASEBEA engine, see the section Getting Started: SASEBEA Interface Engine, which shows how to view the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), Table T10101, "Percent Change from Preceding Period in Real Gross Domestic Product." The sample SAS code for accessing the table appears at the end of that section.