巴德 宏观经济学原理（英文版·第8版）Chapter 5 Eye Ons.pptxVIP

EYE Ons5GDP: A Measure of TotalProduction and Income The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Business Cycle Dating Committee determines the dates of U.S. business cycle turning points. To identify the date of a business cycle peak, the NBER committee looks at data on industrial production, total employment, real GDP, and wholesale and retail sales.The two most reliable measures of aggregate domestic production are real GDP measured using the expenditure approach and the income approach. The NBER committee met in November 2008 to determine when the economy went into recession.Because of a statistical discrepancy, the two estimates of real GDP differ and for a few quarters in 2007 and 2008 they told conflicting stories.The NBER examined other data on real personal income, real manufacturing, wholesale and retail sales, industrial production, and employment. All of these data peaked between November 2007 and June 2008.The committee decided that November 2007 was the peak. But as the figure shows, real GDP didn’t begin a sustained fall until the second quarter of 2008. In contrast to the difficult task of dating the cycle peak, the trough was clear. The trough occurred in the second quarter of 2009. When American Airlines buys a new reservations software package, is that expenditure an expenditure on a final good or an intermediate good?Before 1999, the national income accountants counted the purchase of software as expenditure on an intermediate good—and it was excluded from GDP. Since 1999, the national income accountants have classified the purchase of new software as investment—and is now included in GDP. How big of a deal is this?When the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) recalculated the 1996 GDP, the estimate of GDP in 1996 increased by $115 billion—a lot of money.In 1996, GDP was $7,662 billion, so the increase of $115 billion is 1.5 percent of GDP.This example shows how the BEA works to measure GDP as accurately as possible. Where in the National I