Methodology of the USDA, Economic Research Service’s Agricultural Trade Multipliers

by Steven Zahniser, Wendy Zeng, Fengxia Dong, Maros Ivanic, Megan Husby, Xuan Pham, and Douglas Meade

USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) produces the Agricultural Trade Multipliers (ATMs)—a data product that provides annual estimates of the economic output and number of jobs supported by U.S. agricultural trade, with detail for 124 product groups. The ATMs are a resource for Government agencies, academics, and other stakeholders to estimate the effect that U.S. agricultural trade has on the farm and nonfarm sectors of the U.S. economy and the contribution of U.S. agricultural exports to employment and economic output. In 2021, ERS researchers overhauled the computer programming used to estimate the multipliers to implement an approach that was more streamlined and automated, while retaining the structure of the existing model. This bulletin outlines the methodology used in the new programming to access the data needed to estimate the ATMs and to utilize that information to calculate the estimates.

Keywords: Agricultural Trade Multipliers, agricultural trade, output, jobs, employment

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