Post by account_disabled on Feb 26, 2024 22:19:29 GMT -6
Remember the double-dip recession of 2012? It is a collector's item. Two years after a slow climb from the nadir of the 2008-09 crisis, Britain's Office for National Statistics announced that the UK economy had contracted per cent in the final quarter of 2011. and the same again in the first three months of 2012. But then he changed his mind. In mid-2013, the ONS re-examined the data and decided that output had remained stable during the first quarter of the recession receded. Revisions continued and, as of today, the ONS's best estimate is that the British economy grew by 0.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2012, a total improvement of one percentage point in total. If it seems like I'm being critical, I shouldn't be. Measuring gross domestic product is extremely complicated. Around the world, national statistical offices struggle to get the sums right the first time.
Some fight more than others. When Ireland first reported its GDP growth estimate in the first quarter of it was percent. A year later, and with some rather unique distortions due to its location as the headquarters Jordan Mobile Number List of many large American technology and pharmaceutical companies, this figure was revised upwards to a surprising 21.4 percent. On average, five years after an estimate of quarterly Irish GDP growth is first published, the latest revision of that figure is a full two percentage points lower than the original value. The equivalent for the UK is almost 10 times lower, at 0.25 percentage points, making the ONS's initial estimates among the most accurate in the developed world, well ahead of the US at 0.26 and well ahead from countries such as Japan (0.46) and Norway (0.56). But what matters is not only the size of the reviews, but also the direction.
Developed countries that consistently report quarterly GDP reviews to the OECD, the UK's initial estimates are the most pessimistic. Britain's quarterly growth figures typically finish 0.15 percentage points higher than initially thought. The Germans increase on average by 0.07, the French by 0.04, while the Americans, always optimistic, usually end up revising their estimates downwards by 0.11 percentage points. In other words, the next time we hear a set of quarterly growth figures, it wouldn't be unreasonable to mentally add 0.15 to the UK's and subtract 0.11 from the US's. All of this may seem like a nerdy detail, but it's important because people graft strong narratives onto this remarkably flimsy data. Britain was the only G7 economy that had not yet recovered to pre-Covid levels, until it wasn't.
Some fight more than others. When Ireland first reported its GDP growth estimate in the first quarter of it was percent. A year later, and with some rather unique distortions due to its location as the headquarters Jordan Mobile Number List of many large American technology and pharmaceutical companies, this figure was revised upwards to a surprising 21.4 percent. On average, five years after an estimate of quarterly Irish GDP growth is first published, the latest revision of that figure is a full two percentage points lower than the original value. The equivalent for the UK is almost 10 times lower, at 0.25 percentage points, making the ONS's initial estimates among the most accurate in the developed world, well ahead of the US at 0.26 and well ahead from countries such as Japan (0.46) and Norway (0.56). But what matters is not only the size of the reviews, but also the direction.
Developed countries that consistently report quarterly GDP reviews to the OECD, the UK's initial estimates are the most pessimistic. Britain's quarterly growth figures typically finish 0.15 percentage points higher than initially thought. The Germans increase on average by 0.07, the French by 0.04, while the Americans, always optimistic, usually end up revising their estimates downwards by 0.11 percentage points. In other words, the next time we hear a set of quarterly growth figures, it wouldn't be unreasonable to mentally add 0.15 to the UK's and subtract 0.11 from the US's. All of this may seem like a nerdy detail, but it's important because people graft strong narratives onto this remarkably flimsy data. Britain was the only G7 economy that had not yet recovered to pre-Covid levels, until it wasn't.