Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Real GDP

In Chapter 9 of Naked Economics, Whellan discusses key macroeconomic concepts including GDP, GDP per capita and finally real GDP. To understand what real GDP means for the average person, we must first compare the real GDP of a country to the nominal GDP. Nnominal GDP could be very high,but  if inflation is high too then we arn't that much better off. However, real GDP takes into account the changes in inflation. Let us take cars for example. If in one year we are producing 20 cars at a price of 10,000 our nominal GDP is going to be 200,000. In the next year, if we produce 10,000 cars for 25,000 our nominal GDP is going to be 250,000 indicating that the people are left better off. However, Wheelan shows that this is in fact false. Although the GDP went up, we still only have 10 cars so we are not left better off. Thus, nominal GDP doesn't really show much better off the country and its citizens are. However, Real GDP does. The Real GDP is going to show us if we really do have growth, based on how much we produce taking into account inflation. So, for the average citizen, Real GDP shows us if we are actually better off then we were before, taking into account changes in price.

1 comment:

  1. Nice job. Good examples. What are the limitations to GDP?
    5/5

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