Future Work

By providing detailed industry use of transportation services and measuring in-house transportation, the TSAs provide a more comprehensive picture of the role of transportation in the U.S. economy. This report provides an update as to this role. Future updates can improve and extend the measured impacts by:

• Updating data sources used in creating distribution weights.
• Adding other modes of in-house transportation, such as the business use of automobiles, when information becomes available.
• Treating in-house transportation in the same manner as the I-O accounts treat the use of for-hire transportation, that is, only transportation expenses associated with moving intermediate inputs to the industry plus the expenses for certain direct transportation services. Doing so would require detailed information on the type of commodities carried by in-house truck and on the origin and destination of the transported commodities.

Future production of the TSAs also can allow for examination of the changing role of transportation in the economy. The TSAs based on the 2002 I-O benchmark accounts are forthcoming.