Excel compatibility with multiple regions
I am running an IMPLAN analysis of the impact of 30 separate firms from the same industry on their respective MSAs. Each firm is located in a different MSA. The analysis will be based on a survey that asks for each firm's capital and operating expenditures by year for 10 years.
The IMPLAN activities will be uniform for every firm. Activity values will relate to direct outputs from the survey, which I will have in Excel format.
My question is how to run the IMPLAN analysis most efficiently for the 30 firms and options to integrate the survey outputs from Excel with IMPLAN.
(1) I have set up all activities in one MSA. If I export these data to the Activity Library, what will I need to adjust when I import these activities to another MSA? For example, I assume the local purchase percentage (based on the SAM model) from the original MSA is also imported to the new MSA. Are there other elements of the activity that will need adjusting when imported? Are industry spending coefficients, for example, common across MSAs? Is there any way to automate adjusting the LPP to reflect the SAM values of the new MSA?
(2) I have tried importing activities from Excel using the template provided, but IMPLAN does not recognize when I change the event year; it always displays some default event year that doesn't appear in the Excel. Is there a way to ensure the event year from Excel is displayed in IMPLAN?
(3) Assuming event years can be adjusted, one idea I have for analyzing results is to:
(A) Setup activities for one MSA
(B) Export all the activities to Excel to essentially create activity templates
(C) Program Excel to populate these templates with the survey results (treating one firms' responses as the values for a set of activities)
(D) Create the next IMPLAN model for the next MSA and import the Excel-based activities -- with the appropriate Activity values already assigned.
(E) Adjust Local Purchase Percentages to reflect the model's SAM values.
Does the process above seem possible? (I have yet to purchase all the data I need, so I can't try it myself.) Is there a way to automatically adjust LPPs to the local SAM values when I import from Excel? Are there other adjustments I need to make when importing activities from one model to another? (The activities include an industry spending pattern, a labor income change, a commodity change, and an institutional spending pattern.)
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Hi Kevin. We have reviewed your methodology and everything looks fine. We apology for the problem you encountered when importing the survey outputs from Excel into IMPLAN. We will take a look at that. However, here is the process that should work. In version 3, you would navigate to the template found in the appliance\implan user data\utilities directory. Populate the template with your information and save. To populate your IMPLAN model from the Excel template, you would navigate to Activity>Activity Options>Import> choose "From Excel" and it should work. Another way to do this is to build the Activities and Events for one MSA, and if they are the same for all the other MSAs, import those Activities and Events to other IMPLAN models/MSAs. To do this, you would open the model that you want to populate with the same Activities and Events, navigate to Setup Activities>Activity Options>Import>From Another Model and browse to the model that you want to copy the Activities and Events from, open and select all of the Activities and Events and select Import. Once you have imported them, you would enter your new event values for that particular MSA. The local purchase percentage (based on the SAM model) from the original MSA would also be imported to the new MSA. Industry spending coefficients probably would differ across MSAs and you can change the LPP at one time to reflect the SAM values of the new MSA, assuming you want to set them to the Model SAM Value. As far as changing the event year, this is critical and should be set before entering any values for your events. This ensures that the model picks up the correct deflators before applying the multipliers. So the answer is yes to your question about ensuring the correct event year from Excel is displayed in IMPLAN. You do this by setting it once the Activities and Events have been imported into IMPLAN if they need adjusting. Finally, we cannot speak to the aspects of programming Excel to populate your templates with the survey results (treating one firms' responses as the values for a set of activities) in your study. As long as you are comfortable in doing that, then it should be fine. -
Thanks for your reply. The approach you state is fine for most activity types; however, when creating an industry spending pattern Excel - whether using your template or exporting and importing an activity created in IMPLAN - the Event year is never what I add to the template; it always reverts to 2012. (Actually the template does not allow for an event year for industry spending patterns, only an activity year; but when I import, the activity year is not displayed and the event year reverts to 2012.) So the event year must be readjusted in the model. You say that changing the event year "is critical and should be set before entering any values for your events." So if I import an industry spending pattern from Excel with an event year of 2014, and it automatically reverts to 2012 when imported, what do I need to do besides manually changing the event year to "ensure that the model picks up the correct deflators before applying the multipliers." Do I need to re-enter the value that I've imported? (I am using version 3.1.) One other question: Say I have a series of commodity purchases by year. Is there any way to deflate all these values outside of IMPLAN so I can import just one activity? What about a string of annual industry spending patterns? -
Hi Kevin, We apologize for the confusion in this regard. For the Industry Spending Pattern Activity Type that you import you are correct there is no year, the reason for this is that it is on a commodity basis and thus Employment and Labor Income are not estimated until after market shares are applied, so the Event Year can be applied after the import through the Event Options>Change All>Event Year>2014 if 2014 were your desired Event Year. In regards to your second question(s), we apologize but we are a bit unclear about what you are describing with you list of commodity purchases or string of spending patterns. Could you provide us with an example of when/where/why you would need to have a series of commodity purchases in several different years, or what types of spending patterns or expenditures you are considering stringing together? Thanks!
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