Disaggregated National Accounts: Measurement and Application

Traditional national accounts measure aggregate flows, such as national consumption, income, and output, but include limited information on how subgroups of firms and households in the economy are connected. For example, standard national accounts do not contain data on which consumers purchase goods from which firms, which producers pay income to which consumers, and which consumers and producers transact with the government. Transaction-level microdata enable researchers to measure how different parts of the economy are connected through disaggregated financial flows between households, firms, the government, and the rest of the world. Analyzing disaggregated flows can provide novel insights about the effects of economic policies and shocks on aggregate outcomes as well as about the heterogeneous effects on different subgroups of firms and households. Transaction-level data need to be embedded into conceptual frameworks in order to develop policy lessons and insights on how shocks propagate through the economy.

To promote research on disaggregated national accounts, the NBER will convene a conference a one-day virtual conference on Friday, December 11, 2025. The conference will be organized by NBER affiliates Kilian Huber (University of Chicago) and Ludwig Straub (Harvard University). The conference will bring together researchers who are studying transaction-level data from a variety of perspectives. Topics that are suitable for discussion include, but are not limited to: 

• How do heterogeneous shocks to subgroups of regions and industries propagate across the economy and become general equilibrium outcomes?
• How can data on disaggregated flows between different subparts of the economy (firms, households, the government, and the rest of the world) improve our understanding of macroeconomic dynamics?
• How can we measure disaggregated flows using transaction-level data, government records, or alternative sources?
• Can we establish stylized facts on how different types of firms and households are connected?
• What are the challenges and potential benefits of making transaction-level data consistent with traditional national accounts?
• To what extent are the insights of theoretical models capturing disaggregated flows different from coarser models with representative households and firms?
• What are the potential gains to the private and public sectors from making disaggregated national accounts widely available?

To be considered for inclusion on the program, upload papers by 11:59pm ET on Wednesday, August 27, 2025.

Submissions by researchers with and without NBER affiliations and by early career scholars are welcome. Please do not submit papers that will be published by December 2025. 

Decisions about which papers will be included on the program will be announced by late September. Please feel free to forward this call to others who might be conducting research on related topics. Questions about this meeting may be directed to confer@nber.org.