Bettina Aten is Chief of Regional Prices at the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), United States Commerce Department. Her recent work focuses on estimating geographic differences in price levels for states and metropolitan areas in the US. Geographic price levels are similar to purchasing power parities, a concept that is used in international comparisons of national accounts such as those published in the Penn World Table, which Ms. Aten co-produced for many years. Prior to joining BEA in 2003, Ms. Aten taught at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts. She has a Ph.D. in Regional Science from the University of Pennsylvania, MBA from the Wharton School and a Computer Science degree from the University of São Paulo, Brazil.