CHAPTER REVIEW

FACTS AND TOOLS

Question 26.16

1. According to Table 26.1, what country has the highest GDP? What country on the list has the highest GDP per person? What countries on the list have the second highest GDP and the second highest GDP per person?

Question 26.17

2. What is included in GDP: all goods, all services, or both?

Question 26.18

3. What happened to spending on medical services and recreational activities after 1950?

Question 26.19

4. Police officer: “I pulled you over for speeding. You were going 80 miles per hour.”

Driver: “But that’s impossible, officer! I’ve only been driving for 15 minutes!”

The government reports GDP numbers every quarter. How does this story illustrate the meaning of “GDP per year” when the GDP number is reported every three months?

Question 26.20

5. Calculate the annual growth rate of nominal GDP in the following examples:

Nominal GDP in 1930: $97 billion. Nominal GDP in 1931: $84 billion.

Nominal GDP in 1931: $84 billion. Nominal GDP in 1932: $68 billion.

Nominal GDP in 2000: $9,744 billion.

Nominal GDP in 2001: $10,151 billion.

(Source: Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government, Congressional Budget Office.)

Question 26.21

6. Are the following included in U.S. GDP? Briefly explain why or why not:

  1. Used cars sold at a used car store

  2. Your used car you sell to your cousin

  3. Wine made in Napa Valley at a vineyard owned by Australians

  4. Wine made in Australia at a vineyard owned by Americans

  5. The price paid by a French tourist when staying at a San Francisco hotel

  6. The price paid by an American tourist staying at a Paris hotel

  7. A ticket for a Lakers game

Question 26.22

7. By definition, is nominal GDP higher than real GDP?

Question 26.23

8. In the last 20 years, have recessions been getting more frequent or less frequent than they used to be?

Question 26.24

9. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, which of the following are “normally” part of the definition of a recession?

A fall in nominal income

A fall in employment

A fall in real income

A fall in the price level

Question 26.25

10. Looking back over the last 10,000 years of human history, which is more “normal”: for GDP per capita to grow or for GDP per capita to stay about the same?

Question 26.26

11. Attach the appropriate fractions to the “long-term averages” in Figure 26.6. (Some fractions will be left over.) These fractions may turn out to be more memorable than the exact percentages in the figure.

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Question 26.27

12. What is the national spending identity? This identity is very important in macroeconomics. It is as important as basic anatomy in medical school: You won’t be able to cure anyone until you know what’s inside a person.

THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING

Question 26.28

1. Calculate GDP in this simple economy:

Consumer purchases: $100 per year

Investment purchases: $50 per year

Government purchases: $20 per year

Total exports: $50 per year

Total imports: $70 per year

Question 26.29

2. Since World War II, who were the only three recession-free U.S. presidents? (We’ll revisit the question of how presidents matter for the economy in later chapters.)

Question 26.30

3. We noted that “government purchases” don’t include all government spending. A big part of what the U.S. government does is transfer money from one person to another. Social Security (payments to retirees), and Medicare and Medicaid (paying for medical care for the elderly and the poor) make up most of these “government transfers.” We’ll look into this in more detail in Chapter 36, but right now, let’s see how big “government transfers” are and how fast they’ve grown in the federal government’s budget. The figures in this table are all in non-inflation-adjusted dollars. Complete the table.

Year

Total Federal Transfers

Total Federal Spending

Transfers as Percent of Spending

1950

$13.6 billion

$42.5 billion

________

2000

$1,057 billion

$1,788 billion

________

Growth Rate in %:

________

________

________

Source: Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables, Fiscal Year2003. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Question 26.31

4. Let’s see what fraction of the economic pie goes to workers in the form of wages, and let’s see if it has changed over the years. The “wage share” seems like it should be easy to calculate, but there’s a problem. That problem brings us back to the big idea of opportunity cost. The problem itself is straightforward: When a small business owner makes money, should we count that as “wages” or as “profit?” Usually, a small business owner is working at the business most days, doing the kinds of tasks that you could easily pay someone else to do: In other words, from the looking-in-the-window perspective, a business owner looks like a worker, and workers earn wages. But since the owner gets to keep all the profits that are left over after paying off the other workers and the bank, it looks like the money that he or she earns should count as profit.

What to do? The best solution is to calculate the “opportunity cost” of the business owner’s time: In other words, estimate roughly how much the business owner would get paid if he or she were working as an employee. It tells us how much of the business owner’s income is truly wage income.

The second best solution, which we’ll use in this question, is to just guess that one-third, one-half, or two-thirds of the business owner’s income is really wages, and the rest is profit. As so often in economics, we make some assumptions; Let’s see if that changes our view of the economy. Using this measure, let’s see what has happened to the slice of the pie going to workers:

Year

Wages (including salaries and bonuses)

Business Owner’s Income

1959

62% of national income

11% of national income

2003

64% of national income

9% of national income

Source: Survey of Current Business. Bureau of Economic Analysis, March 2004.

Using these data, complete the following table:

Year

Total Wages as Percentage of National Income

 

Including One-third of Business Income

Including One-half of Business Income

Including Two-thirds of Business Income

1959

 

 

 

2003

 

 

 

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So, now that you’ve calculated this, does it appear that “wage share” has risen by more than 5%, fallen by more than 5%, or stayed roughly the same over the decades? Does the one-third, one-half, or two-thirds business owner adjustment affect this conclusion?

Question 26.32

5. Let’s figure out GDP for Robinson Crusoe.

  1. Initially, he is stuck on an island without the wisdom and local knowledge of Friday. Because Crusoe is a proper Englishman, he wants to keep his accounts. This year, he catches and eats 2,000 fish valued at one British pound (£) each, grows and eats 4,000 coconuts valued at 0.5 British pounds each, and makes two huts (housing) valued at 200 pounds each.

    If government purchases are zero and there is no trade, what is C for Crusoe? What is I? What is Y? (We are going to start using those letters as if they mean something: See question 12 in the previous section.)

  2. One year, he learns of a tribe on a nearby island who are willing to trade with him: If he gives fish, they give clams. He produces just as much as before, but he trades 500 of the 2,000 fish and receives 10,000 clams valued at 5 clams per British pound. What is the British pound value of the exported fish? Of the imported clams? What are C, I, and X now? What is GDP now?

  3. The following year, Crusoe produces the same as in every other year, but a tribe on the other side of the island steals his two huts after he makes them, and gives him nothing in return. So he exports, but does not import at all. What are C, I, X, and Y now?

  4. In Crusoe’s final year on the island, he produces the same as in every other year (he’s a reliable worker), but a new shipwreck washes up on his island containing a clock worth £3, a new shirt worth £2, and a copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost and Shakespeare’s complete works, each worth £1. Treat these as imported consumer goods. What is GDP this year? (Note: Emphasize the “P” in GDP when considering your answer.) What are C, I, X, and Y this year? (Note: One of the four is bigger than usual, one is negative.)

  5. Is Crusoe probably happy about what happens in question 5c? Is he probably happy about what happens in question 5d? Keep these answers in mind for when we discuss the economics of trade later on.

Question 26.33

6. Let’s think about an economically sound way to measure the value of leisure. To keep this simple, we’ll just think about the value of leisure to people who could work but who decide to stay home. Also, we won’t think about how much actual workers value their free time, or about how much children and retirees value their time.

In a standard supply and demand labor model, firms “demand” labor, while workers “supply” labor. Let’s think about a labor market that is in equilibrium, with a wage of $20 per hour (close to the U.S. average) and with 150 million Americans working out of a total of 225 million working-age Americans.

  1. According to this simplified model of the U.S. economy, some workers would work if the wage were higher, but at the current wage, they’d rather stay home and watch reruns of Seinfeld or (don’t let this be you!) Two and a Half Men. For the workers who are right on the margin between working and not working, what would their wage be if wages rose ever so slightly and they went to work?

  2. Let’s use this wage as a shorthand for how much nonworkers value their time. After all, the “opportunity cost” of their free time must be at least this high, because otherwise they’d take a job. Now, let’s calculate a GDP measure that adds a rough estimate of the value enjoyed by these nonworkers. We’ll use the following identity, and we’ll round the value of nominal GDP to $14 trillion (close to the actual 2008 level):

Leisure-augmented GDP = Regular GDP + Total monetary value of leisure

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If the average working person works 2,000 hours per year (that’s a 40-hour week for 50 weeks a year), then what is the leisure-augmented value of U.S. GDP?

Question 26.34

7. Consider the following two claims. The first would be a typical statement in the magazine The Nation, while the second would be a typical statement in the magazine National Review:

Europeans have strong labor unions, so their workers get a bigger share of the pie than American workers.

Since European businesses are highly regulated, they have little incentive to make big profits. Therefore, they get a much smaller share of national product than American workers.

It is true that Europeans have stronger labor unions than Americans, and it is true that European businesses face higher regulatory burdens than American businesses. But with that in mind, what is wrong with these two statements? What fact are they ignoring? And what does that fact tell us about what strong unions and high levels of government regulation can’t do?

Question 26.35

8. The underground economy and other nonpriced production make it difficult to accurately measure the precise level of GDP. But GDP could still be very accurate for measuring changes in the economy. If Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve head, is trying to find out whether the U.S. economy has gone into a recession, are the difficulties of measuring nonpriced production likely to be important problems for her purposes? How is this like always wearing your shoes when you step on the bathroom scale?

Question 26.36

9.

  1. U.S. GDP is approximately $14 trillion. If GDP were divided up equally among all 300 million Americans, what would each person get? If you and your nine best friends took almost all of the GDP for yourselves, but gave $1,000 per person for everyone else, how much would you get each year, just for yourself?

  2. More seriously, currently 150,000 people in the United States earn more than $1.5 million per year. If you could take their money and divide it up among the approximately 300 million other Americans, how much money could you give to each person every year? Note that $1.5 million is only the cutoff: On average, this group earns $3 million per year, so use that number in your calculations.

    (Source: Johnston, David Cay. Richest are leaving even the rich far behind, New York Times, June 5, 2005, based on U.S. government data.)

Question 26.37

10. Let’s sum up some basic facts of U.S. economic history with numbers:

  1. First, let’s measure the size of the Great Depression:

    Real GDP in 1929 (peak): $323 billion

    Real GDP in 1933 (trough): $206 billion

    Price level in 1929: 33

    Price level in 1933: 24

    Calculate the percent change in real GDP and the percent change in the price level from 1929 to 1933. First, calculate the total change, and then divide it by the number of years to get the more typical measure of “percent per year.” (Note: This is four full years, not three or five.)

  2. Second, let’s measure how much the economy grew from the lowest depths of the Depression to the peak of World War II’s economic boom:

    Real GDP in 1933 (trough): $206 billion

    Real GDP in 1945: $596 billion

    Price level in 1933: 24

    Price level in 1945: 38

    Again, first calculate the total change, and then divide it by the number of years to get the more typical measure of “percent per year.”

  3. Finally, let’s see if a growing economy must mean growing prices:

    Real GDP in 1870: $36 billion

    Real GDP in 1900: $124 billion

    Price level in 1870: 22

    Price level in 1900: 16

    Calculate the total and annual growth rates as before. Note: The price level fell fairly smoothly across these three decades, a time when the economy grew rapidly and many great American novels were written about life in the growing cities.

    (Source: Gordon, Robert J., ed. 1986. The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.)

Question 26.38

11. What is the difference between a nation’s wealth and its GDP? How are the two related?

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CHALLENGES

Question 26.39

1. During World War II, the government did a good job measuring nominal GDP. But if the price level was calculated incorrectly, we might get a completely wrong idea about what happened with real GDP. During World War II, price ceilings were in place. That means that some things that would’ve been expensive were instead artificially cheap. Within a few years of the war’s end, price controls finally ended, and the price level spiked up about 20%. If the true price level during the war was actually 20% higher than reported, would that mean real GDP is higher than the official number in question 10b in the previous section, lower than that number, or is it still the same as that number?

Question 26.40

2. If U.S. government statistics counted education spending as part of investment, which of the following would rise, which would fall, and which would remain unchanged? (Note: You might use rise, fall, and stay unchanged more than once each or you might not.)

Consumption

Investment

Gross domestic product

Question 26.41

3. If U.S. government statistics counted people who are receiving unemployment benefits as people who are “government employees” hired to “search for work,” which of the following would rise, which would fall, and which would remain unchanged? (Note: You might use rise, fall, and unchanged more than once each or you might not.)

Consumption

Government purchases

Gross domestic product

Question 26.42

4. According to legend, some government

employees do very little work. If this legend is true enough to be important, then we may be measuring GDP incorrectly. Officially, we say that these are “employed workers” but to a great extent these “employees” are really unemployed in any useful task; they are receiving transfer payments and watching YouTube for 40 hours per week. If, instead, government statistics counted these YouTube-watching government employees as simply retired or unemployed, which of the following would rise, which would fall, and which would remain unchanged? (Note: You might use rise, fall, and unchanged more than once each or you might not.)

Consumption

Government purchases

Gross domestic product

!launch! WORK IT OUT

Are the following included in U.S. GDP? Briefly explain why or why not:

  1. Used textbooks sold at your college bookstore

  2. Used books sold at a garage sale

  3. Cars made in the United States at a Toyota factory

  4. Cars made in Germany at a General Motors factory

  5. The price paid by a German tourist when staying at a New York City hotel

  6. The price paid by an American tourist staying at a Berlin hotel

  7. A ticket for a Yankees game

* We also have to make some corrections for depreciation. Over time machines wear down, factories fall into disrepair, and homes age. Depreciated capital doesn’t add to anyone’s income but GDP measures production before depreciation, so if we calculate GDP using the income approach, we need to adjust for the depreciation of capital.