The GDP Smackdown

Here is a fun video showing a smackdown showing what is and is not included in GDP.

Ep. 3: GDP SMACKDOWN | Chris Henchy from We The Economy on Vimeo.

The Puzzle of Weak First-Quarter GDP Growth

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (in a recent letter by Rudebusch, Wilson, and Mahedy) shows that after correcting for seasonal factors (i.e. bad weather) the first quarter grew at an annual rate closer to 1.8% (opposed to the official 0.2%). This is good, but given how difficult estimating GDP has become, how reliable of a measure is it really? Can anyone think of something better to measure the state of the economy?

An Update on GDP

So... how's the economy doing? There is a lot of debate over the current state of the U.S. economy. Here are a couple of articles discussing first quarter GDP...

1. Why You Can't Put Faith in Reports of First Quarter Economic Slumps by Justin Wolfers
2. Ouch! US Trade Deficit Means US GDP Probably Contracted In First Quarter