Playing Games with GDP Numbers: China’s Growth Has Not Slowed to a Crawl
Playing Games with GDP Numbers: China’s Growth Has Not Slowed to a Crawl Dean Baker, via Patreon GDP growth in the United States is always reported as an annual rate. This means that if the economy grew 0.5 percent from the first quarter to the second quarter, it would be universally reported as 2.0 percent growth, with reporters always giving the annual rate. This is basically four times the quarterly rate. (It’s actually the first quarter’s growth rate taken to the fourth power, but this will be the same for small numbers.) This is a simple and obvious point. It is not something that is debated among reporters or economists, it is just a standard that has become universally accepted. Many other countries do not report their growth numbers as annual rates. They report a quarter’s growth number at a quarterly rate. That is fine, there is nothing that makes the use of an annual rate better, the point is that everyo...