Tag: GDP

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Economics

[2610] GDP measures output, not welfare

It may seem strange that GDP rises if there are more road accidents. This is partly because  of greater activity by emergency services. On the contrary, one would intuitively like to see GDP diminishing in such circumstances. But this would be to confuse a measure of output (GDP) with a measure of welfare, which GDP is not. At most, GDP is a measure of the contribution of production to welfare. There are a great number of other dimensions to welfare that GDP does not claim to measure.

[…]

While the national accounts system has the above major limitations, it should not be criticised out of misunderstanding about its objectives and definitions. For example, many people fail to understand why GDP does not fall following major natural catastrophes (or terrorist attacks). This is because they misunderstand the definition of GDP, which, as we have seen, measures output during a given period. People tend to confuse GDP with the country’s economic wealth. Undoubtedly, major calamities destroy part of the economic wealth (buildings, houses, roads and infrastructure), but they do not, per se, constitute negative production and so do not directly contribute to a decline in GDP. Destruction can indirectly affect production in a negative or positive way. When a factory is destroyed it ceases production, but it also has to be rebuilt and this constitutes production. For this reason, paradoxically, it is possible for a natural catastrophe to have a positive impact (in the purely mathematical sense of the word “positive”) on GDP. [Page 37. François Lequiller. Derek Blades. Understanding National Accounts. OECD Publishing. 2006]

Categories
Economics

[2579] Far higher potential output for Malaysia?

Both the GDP and the CPI numbers for Malaysia were released yesterday.

Real GDP growth grew by 5.4% in the second quarter from a year ago. Although I suspected that growth would be strong due to strong showing in the industrial production index, I found 5.4% as surprising still. It was too strong for whatever the production index was showing.

The strong growth, along with low unemployment rate, provides a puzzle when it is considered together with inflation trend. Inflation in Malaysia, both headline (1.4% in July from a year ago) and core (1.3%) inflations, has been decreasing since the beginning of the year. Typically, strong growth creates demand-pull inflation. That demand-pull inflation has been absent in the second quarter despite strong GDP showing.

Furthermore, the unemployment rate has been low and I tend to consider the current rate to be quite close to the idea of full employment.  The latest employment rate, which is for the month of May, is 3.0%. Previously, the rate hovered between 3.3% and 3.1%. Labor participation rate is also quite high given historical standard. The assumption of full employment implies the economy has been working close to its full potential. Any growth stronger than the potential will put upward pressure on prices.

Yet, inflation, especially core inflation, has been decreasing throughout the year.

This may suggest that the potential output is higher than the growth the Malaysian economy has been experiencing so far. It also suggests that the already low unemployment rate can go down further and that we are not really that close to full potential.

So, Malaysia can grow faster still, which is an exciting realization. I heard of the go-go 1990s. Maybe, it is time for the go-go 2010s in spite of everything. Let us just hope things will not go down in flame like it eventually did in the 90s.

Whatever it is, if growth so far has been unsustainable, then inflation should accelerate in the near future. If it is sustainable (i.e. actual growth is lower than potential), we should see only limited demand-pull inflation.

Finally, I previously projected the Malaysian economy to grow by 4.0% for the whole of 2012. I am looking like a fool now and will be looking to upgrade the growth rate soon. Nevertheless, I am ultimately skiddish about that upgrade. Although domestic demand, which grew by 12.0% year-on-year, has proven to be capable of cushioning the adverse impacts from weak exports, the global risk is still there. Trade has not collapsed but it can and if it does, an upgrade will be a very foolish thing to do.

Categories
Economics

[2502] A too convenient instance of government spending

The Malaysian GDP figures for the 4th quarter came out today, with the full year growth being slightly above 5%. Judging by the components of the GDP and their respective growth, I find the growth rate of 5% to be too convenient for the government, which projected the 2011 economy to grow between 5% and 6%. The reason is that government spending grew by close to 17%.

I shared this last month, and the 4th quarter growth for government spending was even higher than the previous quarter: 23.6% from a year ago.

I did a little calculation just now while I was finishing a GDP report for my bank. I found out that if government spending had not grown at all, that would have shaved almost a complete percentage point out of the 5% annual GDP growth. If the spending increase had been slightly more modest, the overall growth would have missed the government’s target easily. Really, it would not take much to miss the target.

I know there is a low base effect given that there was hardly any government spending growth in 2010. It is very likely that spending planned for 2010 was postponed to 2011.

But the government spending growth is still convenient, too convenient, nonetheless. This may appear to be a case of perverse incentive.

It is much like a case in Liar’s Poker:

One trader remembers that ”Lewie would say he thought the market was going up, and buy a hundred million [dollar-worth of] bonds. The market would start to go down. So Lewie would buy two billion more bonds, and of course the market would then go up. After he had driven the market up, Lewie would turn to me and say, ”˜See I told you it was going up’”¦”

Categories
Economics

[2491] Malaysian real government spending growth

This is the Malaysian government spending year-on-year quarterly growth from 2001 till 2011, as classified in the real gross domestic product.

Categories
Economics

[2480] Two graphs for market monetarists in Malaysia

Before this, nominal GDP is hardly a statistics one would look at. Things are starting to change with the rise of market monetarism.

Here is  how the nominal GDP for Malaysia looks like, in comparison to real GDP. As you can see, there is a big gap between potential and actual output in nominal GDP.

A market monetarist will want the loss in potential output in nominal terms be dealt with. If the person had gotten his way, there would not have been a drop in the nominal GDP. Or rather, the nominal trend would have been more constant instead of exhibiting large variation year after year.

The same loss can be seen in terms of growth.

A market monetarist at Bank Negara would have engaged in big expansion of money supply in late 2008 and 2009 to stabilize the nominal GDP. And he would have tightened supply in 2007 and much of 2008.

This raises a question for me. While I do see the virtues of market monetarism, especially when inflation is persistently too low like in the US, would it work in Malaysia?

The reason I am asking is that I am worried about stagflation. We know that the stagflation of the 1970s was terrible but would that be better than what we experienced in 2009?