How good are GDP statistics? evidence from Europe  

Oleh:

Graff, Michael

Jenis: Article from Proceeding
Dalam koleksi: SIBR-Thammasat 2014 Conference on Interdisciplinary Business & Economics Research June 5th- 7th, 2014 di Emerald Hotel Bangkok, page 1.
Topik: National accounting; GDP; Forecasts; Revisions
Fulltext: b14-017.pdf (17.45KB)

Isi artikel

This paper presents some in depth analyses of the official GDP data from one of the most developed countries in the world - Switzerland - and some independent estimates, the responsible agencies, publication schedules, revision properties and their information content with respect to each other. I show that the early official GDP releases are informationally inefficient. Morgenstern (1950) cautioned against putting too much trust in the accuracy of GDP data, arguing that official numbers are suggesting specious precision. He went as far as denying that quarterly GDP growth rates should be computed at all, claiming that quantitative macroeconomics was at best a 1-digit science. His doubts appear warranted up to this date. GDP data from one of the richest countries in the world are visibly of poor reliability, as vintages are revised substantially, and the validity of the final numbers remains questionable. It is not difficult to imagine how these findings apply to poorer economies, where the official data production can resort to a fraction of the resources in terms of skilled statisticians, computing power and raw data to start with.

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