滥用的GDP-国际财金合作司.DOCVIP

最 新 财 经 资 讯第 （总第234期） 国际司 2014-7-23 目 录 1、被“滥用”的GDP 2 二、马航坠落事件 2、MH17坠机事件信息战使美情报部门陷入“两难” 10 3、普京治下的俄罗斯走向孤立 13 4、欧盟未能就对俄新制裁达成一致 16 三、新兴市场国家 5、阿根廷拒绝接受债务偿还协议 19 6、印尼将为“吃老本”付出代价 21 7、把握人民币国际化良机 24 Has GDP outgrown its use? 1、被“滥用”的GDPBy David Pilling Governments and the media obsess about it while statisticians endlessly fiddle – but what is the real point of GDP and can it ever be accurately measured? What do the price of hair-salon services in Beijing and sexual services in London have in common? The answer is that, depending on how you measure them – or indeed whether you measure them at all – the size of the Chinese and British economies will expand or contract like an accordion. In April, statisticians working under the aegis of the World Bank determined that China’s gross domestic product was far bigger than they had previously realised. China was, in fact, just about to overtake the US as the world’s largest economy, many years earlier than expected. The reason? Statisticians had been overestimating the prices of everything from haircuts to noodles. As a result, they were underestimating the purchasing power of Chinese people and thus the size of the economy. Last month, British statisticians worked some magic too. They declared that the UK economy – admittedly only a fraction of China’s size – was 5 per cent bigger than previously thought. It was as if they had suddenly discovered billions of pounds in annual revenue at the back of the nation’s couch. Here the explanation was simpler. Among other tweaks to their methodology, statisticians started counting the economic “contribution” of prostitution and illegal drugs. Gross domestic product has become a ubiquitous term. It is how we measure economic success. Countries are judged by how much they have of it. Governments can rise and fall according to how effectively their economies create it. Everything from debt levels to the contribution of manufacturing is measured against i