August 30, 2010
Why is it so hard for reporters to understand the idea of purchasing power parity? This is important if anyone is interested in understanding China’s importance in the world economy. China produces and consumes more output in a wide variety of goods and services. This would not make sense for an economy that is just passing the size of Japan, putting China’s economy at a bit more than one-third the size of the U.S. economy.
The more realistic measure is the purchasing power parity measure that puts China’s economy at almost two-thirds of the size of the U.S. economy. This measure applies a common set of prices to all goods and services, regardless of which country they are produced in. This measure of China’s GDP is far more consistent with a country that both buys and produces more cars than the United States, has more Internet users and twice as many cell phones users.
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