宏观经济学---曼昆02.ppt

* In definition #1, note that aggregate investment equals total spending on newly produced capital goods. (If I pay $1000 for a used computer for my business, then I’m doing $1000 of investment, but the person who sold it to me is doing $1000 of disinvestment, so there is no net impact on aggregate investment.) The housing issue A consumer’s spending on a new house counts under investment, not consumption. A tenant’s spending on rent counts under services -- rent is considered spending on “housing services.” So what happens if a renter buys the house she had been renting? Conceptually, consumption should remain unchanged: just because she is no longer paying rent, she is still consuming the same housing services as before. In national income accounting, (the services category of) consumption includes the imputed rental value of owner-occupied housing. To help students keep all this straight, you might suggest that they think of a house as a piece of capital which is used to produce a consumer service, which we might call “housing services”. Thus, spending on the house counts in “investment”, and the value of the housing services that the house provides counts under “consumption” (regardless of whether the housing services are being consumed by the owner of the house or a tenant). Inventories If total inventories are $10 billion at the beginning of the year, and $12 billion at the end, then inventory investment equals $2 billion for the year. Note that inventory investment can be negative (which means inventories fell over the year). * source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce * If you teach the stocks vs. flows concepts, this is a good example of the difference. * Transfer payments are included in “government outlays,” but not in government spending. People who receive transfer payments use these funds to pay for their consumption. Thus, we avoid double-counting by excluding transfer payments from G. * source: