How to read the ‘Economic Data’ tables of Economist Magazine with a better understanding?
- posted by: pencilCake on 2011-11-18
- tagged:
gdp
- score: 1
Can you recommend me a resource that I can make use of it to be able to read the ‘Economic Data’ tables in the end of the each edition of Economist magazine with a better understanding?
For example the differences between ‘latest’ ‘qt’ and ‘2011’ columns of Gross Domestic Product etc.
A resource that is giving an explanation for non-economist readers.
Answer 568
GDP figures (and other time series) can be presented in several ways.
There is a key at the bottom of the Economist's table explaining what the columns are.
With GDP, you might see:
- Year-on-year changes this quarter: so Q3 2011 compared to Q3 2010,
for example. That's what the Economist refers to as latest
- quarter-on-quarter changes - e.g. the change from one quarter to the
next - Q1 to Q2, or Q2 to Q3, or Q3 to Q4, or Q4 to the following Q1.
That may or may not be seasonally adjusted
- Annualised quarterly change: i.e. what the equivalent annual rate would be, if a whole year changed at the same rate as the last quarter did. As a first order approximation, that's four times the quarterly rate. Specifically, it's $(1+quarterly\ change)^4$ - so a 0.3% quarterly increase would give an annualised rate of $(1+0.003)^4\approx1.012054\approx 1.2\%\ change$ - this is what the Economist refers to as Qtr
- forecast for a whole year, based on a combination of historic data for the year to date, and forecasts for the rest of the year. That's what the Economist has in its 2011 and 2012 columns, for published tables within the calendar year 2011.
- outcome for a whole year, based on historic data. Note that this, along with other GDP statistics, are often subject to revision, sometimes many times over, and for some years afterwards
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