Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. This is an extended version of a column that appeared at Project Syndicate on April 17th.
Annual, Annualized, q4/q4 Growth Rates: A Graphical Depiction
Why do reported growth rates differ for the same variable? Refer to the last three years of GDP data to see…
Figure 1: Quarterly GDP, SAAR, FRED series GDPC1 (dark red line), annual, FRED series GDPCA (green bars), in billions of Chained 2009$. 2017 q4/q4 growth rate (red arrow); annual 2017 y/y growth rate (green arrow); 2017Q4 q/q SAAR growth rate (blue arrow); 2016Q1 y/y SAAR growth rate (black arrow). Source: BEA, 2017Q4 3rd release via FRED, and author’s calculations.
So, there are several ways to calculate the growth rate over the course of the year. They will almost invariably differ, perhaps substantially, when GDP is either growing very rapidly or shrinking very rapidly. And there is no “right” way. If one wants to calculate the most recent growth experience, one might stress q/q. If one wants to look at a longer horizon, then one might want to use the quarterly y/y. If one thinks quarterly series are very noisy, one might want to look at annual y/y.
Note: SAAR denotes Seasonally Adjusted at Annual Rates.
Additional Note: One could average the q/q annualized growth rates over the four quarters of 2017 to try to get 2017 q4/q4 growth rate. This calculation leads to an approximation, which gets worse the more variable growth rates are (unless growth rates are calculated as log-differences — which is part of the reason economists like to express variables in logs and log differences…).
Net vs. Gross Investment
Deregulatory moves, both actual and anticipated, have been hailed as spurring business fixed investment [1] Is there content to this assertion? A glance at nonresidential fixed investment seems to be supportive.
Figure 1: Private nonresidential fixed investment, in billions of Ch.2009$, SAAR (blue). NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: BEA, 2017Q4 3rd release.
Twin Deficits Redux? CBO Predicts
From the recent CBO Budget and Economic Outlook, the projected current account and implied cyclically adjusted budget balance.
Figure 1: Structural/cyclically adjusted Federal budget balance (dark blue), and current account balance (dark red), both as a share of GDP. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. CBO projection period shaded gray. Projection of structural budget balance estimated by author using June 2017 estimate, adding in legislative changes reported in CBO (2018). Source: BEA 2017Q4 3rd release, CBO (2018), and author’s calculations.
Trump v. Treasury
Mr. Trump tweeted today:
Russia and China are playing the Currency Devaluation game as the U.S. keeps raising interest rates. Not acceptable!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2018
Anti-ρ-ism in American Policy Discourse
A sequel to my rebuttal to an anti-log manifesto:
Continue reading
Guest Contribution: “Can Media and Text Analytics Provide Insights into Labour Market Conditions in China?”
Today we are pleased to present a guest contribution written by Jeannine Bailliu, Xinfen Han, Mark Kruger, Yu-Hsien Liu and Sri Thanabalasingam (all Bank of Canada). This research may support or challenge prevailing policy orthodoxy. Therefore, the views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and may differ from official Bank of Canada views. No responsibility for them should be attributed to the Bank.
I Bet (Figuratively) Tonight Is the Night: Rosenstein Edition
From PredictIt:
Comovement in Economic Policy Uncertainty
Reader Ed Hanson makes a puzzling assertion regarding trade policy measures announced by Mr. Trump, and the evolution of policy uncertainty as measured by Baker, Bloom and Davis:
As for the uncertainty, I can not make your author’s calculation but I can look at the front page of the policyuncertainty.com site and look at the headline monthly index they present. All the countries, except India, show a similar chart. So I doubt if such uncertainty across the spectrum is caused by a minor thing such as TPP. But I would not be surprised if some of the spike is coming down from the Chinese US trade spiff. Both these countries show very similar recent chart.
TPP: Maybe Not So Horrible
From The Hill:
President Trump on Thursday instructed top administration officials to explore re-entering the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — a trade pact he pulled the U.S. out of last year while calling it a “disaster.”
With this whipsaw of trade policy announcements, is it any wonder that economic policy uncertainty is rising? As measured by the Baker, Bloom and Davis index:
Figure 1: Daily EPU index as of April 12 (blue), and 7 day centered moving average (bold red). Source: policyuncertainty.com, and author’s calculations.
A longer term perspective on economic policy uncertainty is shown in this post.
And of course, most of us knew it wasn’t so horrible at all, back when we had a chance to influence the nature of TPP.
Update, 8:15PM Pacific 4/13: Reader Ed Hanson asserts that EPU is rising for most countries. I plot below the monthly indices; I honestly don’t see what he’s claiming.
Figure 2: Monthly EPU indices. Source: policyuncertainty.com.