SMU SOE Seminar (Mar 11, 2019): A Forensic Examination of China’s National Accounts

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TOPIC:

A FORENSIC EXAMINATION OF CHINA’S NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

ABSTRACT China’s national accounts are based on data collected by local governments. However, since local governments are rewarded for meeting growth and investment targets, they have an incentive to skew local statistics. China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) adjusts the data provided by local governments to calculate GDP at the national level. The adjustments made by the NBS average 5% of GDP since the mid-2000s. On the production side, the discrepancy between local and aggregate GDP is entirely driven by the gap between local and national estimates of industrial output. On the expenditure side, the gap is in investment. Local statistics increasingly misrepresent the true numbers after 2008, but there was no corresponding change in the adjustment made by the NBS. We provide revised estimates of local and national GDP by re-estimating output of industrial, wholesale, and retail firms using data on value-added taxes. We also use several local economic indicators that are less likely to be manipulated by local governments to estimate local and aggregate GDP. The estimates also suggest that the adjustments by the NBS were insufficient after 2008. Relative to the official numbers, we estimate that GDP growth from 2008-2016 is 1.7 percentage points lower and the investment and savings rate in 2016 is 7 percentage points lower. Click here to view the paper. Click here to view the CV.
		PRESENTER Zheng Michael Song Chinese University of Hong Kong
		RESEARCH FIELDS Macroeconomics Chinese Economy Political Economy
		DATE: 11 March 2019 (Monday)
		TIME: 4pm - 5.30pm
		VENUE: Meeting Room 5.1, Level 5 School of Economics Singapore Management University 90 Stamford Road Singapore 178903

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