GDP – Page 3 – Donald Marron

Living Standards, Labor, and Productivity

This week the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released its annual Going for Growth report. The purpose of G4G is to benchmark economic performance among the OECD member countries and suggest pro-growth policy reforms.

My favorite chart in the report examines how GDP per capita differs so much across countries:

The first column of bars shows how GDP per capita in each country stacks up relative to a benchmark equal to the average level of the 15 richest OECD countries in 2008. (Fun fact: In prior years, the OECD used the United States as the benchmark.) As you can see, the United States has the third highest level of per capita income, topped only by Luxembourg and Norway. Looking lower down, you can see that, on average, the GDP per capita of the EU19 countries is more than 20% lower than the benchmark and more than 30% lower than in the United States.

There are two basic ways that a country can achieve a high level of GDP per capita: People can work a lot (i.e., high labor hours per person) or people can work productively (i.e., high output per hour worked). The second and third columns of bars disaggregate the income differences into those two components.

The second column shows that there are significant differences among the countries in the average number of hours worked per person. As you might expect, people in the United States work slightly more than the benchmark average of the richest 15 OECD countries. People work substantially more, on average, in some nations, most notably South Korea, Iceland, and the Czech Republic. People work substantially less in Turkey, France, and Belgium. (Keep in mind that these figures are average hours per person, so they are influenced by the age distribution of the population as well as the number of hours worked by working-age people.)

The third column shows that there are even larger differences among the countries in productivity. Most notably, all of the countries with low per capita incomes have relatively low productivity.

OECD researchers repeated this analysis for a group of emerging economies:

The productivity comparisons are striking: China, Indonesia, and India are 90% less productive than the 15 richest OECD countries. That’s an enormous gap.

The Key Driver of Q4 Growth? Inventories

The economy grew briskly last quarter. According to the second estimate by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, gross domestic product increased at a 5.9% annual pace in the fourth quarter of 2009, a bit higher than BEA’s first 5.7% estimate.

As usual, I think the best way to understand this report is to see what sectors contributed the most or least to reported growth:

Almost two-thirds of the growth reflects businesses restocking their shelves and warehouses: inventories accounted for 3.8 percentage points of the overall 5.9% of growth.

Consumer spending grew at a modest 1.7% pace and thus added 1.2 percentage points to overall growth (consumer spending accounts for about 70% of the economy and 70% x 1.7% = 1.2%). That’s down from the previous quarter, when cash-for-clunkers boosted car purchases. Housing investment also slowed, again in the wake of earlier efforts–the tax credit for new home buyers–that had boosted growth in the third quarter.

Business investment in equipment and software showed signs of life, growing at a healthy 18% pace. That added 1.1 percentage points to growth, about half of which was offset by the ongoing decline in business investment in structures.

Government spending fell slightly during the quarter. Stimulus efforts boosted non-defense spending by the federal government, but that increase was more than offset by a decline in defense spending and in state and local spending.

Inventories Boosted Growth in Q4 2009

The economy grew briskly last quarter. According to the advance estimate by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, gross domestic product increased at a 5.7% pace in the fourth quarter of 2009, faster than many forecasters had expected. (Note: BEA will revise this figure next month and the month after that. Oh, and then BEA will revise it periodically over the next few years.)

As usual, I think the best way to understand this report is to see what sectors contributed the most or least to reported growth:

As expected, much of the growth reflects businesses restocking their shelves and warehouses: inventories accounted for 3.4 percentage points of the overall 5.7% of growth.

Consumer spending grew at a moderate 2.0% pace and thus added 1.4 percentage points to overall growth (consumer spending accounts for about 70% of the economy and 70% x 2.0% = 1.4 %). That’s down from the previous quarter, when cash-for-clunkers boosted car purchases. Housing investment also slowed, again in the wake of earlier efforts–the tax credit for new home buyers–that had boosted growth in the third quarter.

Business investment in equipment and software showed signs of life, growing at a 13% pace, the strongest since early 2006. That added 0.8 percentage points to growth, slightly more than half of which was offset by the ongoing decline in business investment in structures.

Will Rising Government Debt Hurt Growth?

Every January America’s economists gather for their annual conference. There are far more papers than one could ever read (or want to read), so you need a strategy to choose the most important.

In recent years, your optimal strategy should have included the papers by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff (see, e.g., this prescient paper from 2008). And so it is again in 2010.

This year’s installment is a paper that examines how government debt levels relate to economic growth and inflation. Their key finding? High levels of government debt have a substantial economic cost. In developed economies, that cost is weak economic growth. In emerging economies, that cost is weak economic growth and high inflation.

The growth findings are nicely illustrated in the following table from their paper:

Developed economies that have high levels of government debt (90% of GDP or more) have much lower rates of economic growth; for example, their median rate of growth has been a mere 1.6%, much less than the 3 to 4% growth of countries with lower debt levels. The same pattern holds for emerging economies, as well. (The third panel shows that high levels of public and private external debt also reduce growth, but the sample there includes only emerging economies.)

As R&R note, these results are particularly important today given the rapid growth in government debts around the world. In the United States, for example, debt will probably end the year around 60% of GDP, with no sign of stopping. The good news is that we are still relatively far from the 90% level that R&R identify as problematic. The bad news is that current policies will get us close to that level in less than a decade. For example, the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform recently projected that current policies would lift the debt-to-GDP ratio to 85% by 2018.

That’s too close for comfort.

What’s the United States Worth? $1.4 Quadrillion

Happy 2010, everyone. To kick off the new year, I am in Atlanta at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association. As Paul Kedrosky notes, there are lots of sessions on the financial crisis and its aftermath. Perhaps not surprisingly, many presentations have a pessimistic tone. But there are pockets of optimism, including Robert Shiller’s luncheon speech about the potential benefits of continued financial innovation.

One of Shiller’s ideas is that the federal government should issue a new kind of security that would pay quarterly dividends based on the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). More specifically, each security would entitle its owner to one-trillionth of America’s gross domestic product (GDP). These “Trills” would be perpetual, like common stock in a private company, and would be backed by the government’s full faith and credit.

I will leave to others to argue the pros and cons of Trills. What caught my attention was Shiller’s estimate of how much they would be worth. With GDP around $14 trillion, each Trill would pay about $14 in annual dividends this year. That dividend would then increase (or, of course, decrease) as the economy grows (or contracts) in the future.

How much you would be willing to pay for a Trill? In principle, that should depend on your expectations of future GDP growth and your choice of what discount rate to apply to cash flows that track GDP. Oh, and if you worry about the U.S. government defaulting (still a very low risk), you might include a discount for that as well.

Shiller’s own answer is $1,400. In other words, he thinks Trills would be priced with a yield of about 1%. Trill owners would be willing to accept that low yield because they would expect future economic growth to boost dividends–and, therefore, Trill values–in the future.

That figure feels a bit high to me, but not unreasonable. For example, you could justify a $1,400 per Trill valuation if you believe that nominal GDP growth will be 4 percent and that an appropriate discount rate would be 5 percent.

If you take Shiller’s estimate seriously, it is just a short step to placing a value on the U.S. economy as a whole. If one trillionth of the economy is worth $1,400, then the entire economy would be worth $1.4 quadrillion.

Q3 Growth Revised Down Again, Now 2.2%

Q3 keeps looking weaker. The original estimate of Q3 GDP growth came in at a healthy 3.5% annual pace. The second estimate was a respectable 2.8%. And this morning, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its third estimate: an underwhelming 2.2%.

Growth of 2.2% is, of course, much better than the sharp declines in the previous four quarters. But it is still a disappointment.

As usual, I think a useful way to summarize the drivers of Q3 growth is to look at the contributions:

If you compare these figures to those in the BEA’s second estimate, you will see that the latest revision was spread across several categories. Consumers, housing, equipment and software, structures, and inventories were all revised slightly downward.

In principle, the solid growth in consumer spending and housing investment in Q3 should be promising signs, given their previous weakness. However, both were boosted by temporary stimulus efforts. Cash-for-clunkers lifted consumer auto sales in Q3, for example, but we should expect some payback in Q4. Meanwhile, the tax credit for new home buyers helped housing investment record its first increase since late 2005, but some of that may have come at the expense of future housing investment (because potential home owners accelerated purchases when they thought the credit was going to expire; it’s since been extended and broadened).

Note: If the idea of contributions to GDP growth is new to you, here’s a quick primer on how to understand these figures. Consumer spending makes up about 70% of the economy. Consumer spending rose at a 2.9% pace in the third quarter. Putting those figures together, we say that consumer spending contributed about 2.0 percentage points (70% x 2.8%, allowing for some rounding) to third quarter growth.

Q3 Growth Revised Down to 2.8%

As expected, the Bureau of Economic Analysis revised down its estimate of Q3 GDP growth. BEA’s second estimate pegs growth at a 2.8% annual pace in Q3, down from 3.5% in the advance estimate.

The revision was driven by three main factors: consumer spending and business investment in structures were weaker than previously estimated, while imports were stronger.

As usual, I think a useful way to summarize the drivers of Q3 growth is to look at the contributions:

In principle, the solid growth in consumer spending and housing investment should be promising signs, given their previous weakness. However, both were boosted by temporary stimulus efforts. Cash-for-clunkers lifted consumer auto sales in Q3, for example, but we should expect some payback in Q4. Meanwhile, the tax credit for new home buyers helped housing investment record its first increase since late 2005, but some of that may have come at the expense of future housing investment (because potential home owners accelerated purchases when they thought the credit was going to expire; it’s since been extended and broadened).

Note: If the idea of contributions to GDP growth is new to you, here’s a quick primer on how to understand these figures. Consumer spending makes up about 70% of the economy. Consumer spending rose at a 2.9% pace in the third quarter. Putting those figures together, we say that consumer spending contributed about 2.1 percentage points (70% x 2.9%, allowing for some rounding) to third quarter growth.

GDP Growth Returns in Q3

As expected, the economy grew at a healthy pace in the third quarter, expanding at a 3.5% annual pace according to this morning’s data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Among the highlights:

Consumer spending grew at a 3.4% pace, the fastest since the first quarter of 2007. A substantial fraction of that growth reflects vehicle purchases, which were temporarily boosted by the cash-for-clunkers program.

Residential investment grew for the first time since late 2005, driven in part by the tax credit for new homebuyers.

Imports rose for the first time in two years. Most of that increase came from goods, which is consistent with the idea that auto imports increased in response to cash-for-clunkers.

You may notice a trend here, as government policies had a significant effect on the pattern of growth in the third quarter.

As I’ve mentioned before, I think one of the best ways to understand the pattern of growth is to look at the contributions that each major sector made to the overall growth rate:

Q3 Growth Contributions (2009 Advance)

As you can see, consumers, inventories, and exports were the main drivers of Q3 growth, while imports were the main drag.

Q3 represents a striking change from Q2 (shown in the next chart), when the economy contracted at a 0.7% pace and private spending was weak across the board:

Broad Weakness in Q2 GDP (Third)

Note: If the idea of contributions to GDP growth is new to you, here’s a quick primer on how to understand these figures. Consumer spending makes up about 70% of the economy. Consumer spending rose at a 3.4% pace in the third quarter. Putting those figures together, we say that consumer spending contributed about 2.4 percentage points (70% x 3.4%, allowing for some rounding) to third quarter growth.

Still Broad Weakness in Q2 GDP

Earlier today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released updated GDP figures, estimating that the economy contracted at a 0.7% pace in the second quarter. The BEA’s well-named “third estimate” thus indicated that the decline in the second quarter was somewhat slower than the 1.0% BEA had previously estimated.

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, whenever the GDP data come out, the first thing I look at is Table 2, which shows how much different sectors of the economy contributed to the growth (or, in this case, the decline). Even with the small upward revision, the most striking thing about Q2 continues to be how broad the weakness was:

Broad Weakness in Q2 GDP (Third)

As the chart shows, Q2 witnessed declines in every major category of private demand: consumer spending, residential investment, business investment in equipment and software (E&S), business investment in structures, and exports. Wow. To find the last time that happened, you have to go all the way back to … the fourth quarter of last year, when it was even more severe. But before that, you have to go back five decades to the sharp downturn of the late 1950s.

Not surprisingly, government spending helped offset the declines in private spending. Most of the boost came from defense spending (a contribution of 0.7 percentage points), but state and local investment also helped (adding 0.48 percentage points, presumably at least in part due to stimulus spending).

A sharp decline in imports, finally, was the biggest contributor to growth in Q2, at least in an accounting sense. As I’ve noted before, it’s important to choose your words carefully here, since declining imports are clearly not the path to prosperity. In a GDP accounting sense, however, import declines do boost measured growth. Why? Well consider the fall in consumer spending. That decline affected both domestic production and imports. GDP measures domestic production, so we need a way to net out the decline in consumer spending that was attributable to imports. That’s one of the factors being captured in the imports figure.

Note: If the idea of contributions to GDP growth is new to you, here’s a quick primer on how to understand these figures. Consumer spending makes up about 70% of the economy. Consumer spending fell at a 0.9% pace in the second quarter. Putting those figures together, we say that consumer spending contributed about -0.6 percentage points (70% x -0.9%, allowing for some rounding) to second quarter growth.

Latest Data on Transfers and Income

In a series of posts (most recent here), I’ve documented that Americans are getting an increasing portion of their income from the government.

BEA released new data on incomes a couple weeks ago, including revisions back to 1995. These data reinforce the story I’ve described in my previous posts:

Transfers accounted for 17.3% of personal income in June. That’s the second highest in history, topped only by the 18.2% recorded in May, when transfers were boosted by one-time payments from this year’s stimulus act:

The increasing importance of transfers reflects both short-run developments and long-run trends. In the past year, the importance of transfers has grown because of (a) weakness in other forms of income, (b) the natural expansion of transfers due to economic weakness (e.g., increases in unemployment insurance payments), and (c) policies to expand benefits (e.g., as an attempt at stimulus). Over the longer run, however, the growth of transfers has been driven by the expansion of entitlement programs.

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