{"id":263632,"date":"2024-10-31T20:29:25","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T20:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/31\/son-of-shadowstats-government-economic-figures-hide-the-truth-about-the-economy\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:10:39","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:10:39","slug":"son-of-shadowstats-government-economic-figures-hide-the-truth-about-the-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/31\/son-of-shadowstats-government-economic-figures-hide-the-truth-about-the-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Son of ShadowStats: \u201cGovernment economic figures hide the truth about the economy\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> [ad_1]<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Heritage Foundation <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RealEJAntoni\/status\/1851485902960206104\">EJ Antoni<\/a> channels <a href=\"https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/archives\/2008\/09\/shadowstats_deb.html\">ShadowStats<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cGovernment economic figures hide the truth about the economy\u2026\u201d Thang [sic] you,<br \/>@mises , for highlighting a recent paper @profstonge and I wrote that explains how inflation has been greatly underestimated \u2013 read the article by @RonPaul here:<br \/>https:\/\/t.co\/cVroe5QwCT<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I have written a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ssc.wisc.edu\/~mchinn\/OnASO.pdf\">paper<\/a>\u00a0on the <a href=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/articles\/recession-since-2022-us-economic-income-and-output-have-fallen-overall-for-four-years\/\">Antoni-St. Onge thesis<\/a> that using the \u201cright\u201d deflators means GDP in 2024Q2 is below 2019Q2 levels, but here I want to highlight one fact \u2013 what their alternative GDP deflator entails.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/antoni_stonge_fig2-1.png\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-54466\" src=\"https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/antoni_stonge_fig2-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"705\" height=\"669\" srcset=\"https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/antoni_stonge_fig2-1.png 705w, https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/antoni_stonge_fig2-1-300x285.png 300w, https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/antoni_stonge_fig2-1-624x592.png 624w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 705px) 100vw, 705px\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/articles\/recession-since-2022-us-economic-income-and-output-have-fallen-overall-for-four-years\/\">Antoni and St. Onge (2024)<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Notice the big orange area in the above graph, which Antoni and St. Onge attribute to their improved treatment of housing costs. I try to follow their argument, using the product of house prices (Case Shiller national house price index) and 30 year mortgage rates in place of the BEA\u2019s component. I adjust real consumption accordingly (the authors do not mention adjustment to investment or government spending), and recalculate GDP (as shown in the paper). Updating the calculations with the most recent house price and NIPA data, I obtain the following picture of the implied deflators.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/deflators_vs_aso.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-54467\" src=\"https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/deflators_vs_aso.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"993\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/deflators_vs_aso.png 993w, https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/deflators_vs_aso-300x174.png 300w, https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/deflators_vs_aso-768x445.png 768w, https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/deflators_vs_aso-624x362.png 624w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 993px) 100vw, 993px\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Figure 1:<\/strong> GDP deflator from BEA (orange), implied deflator replacing BEA housing costs with product of house prices and mortgage rate, at 15% weight in consumption (light blue), and at 30% weight (purple), and Antoni-St.Onge implied GDP deflator (red square), all relative to 2019Q1. NBER defined peak-to-trough recession dates shaded gray. Source: BEA, NBER, author\u2019s calculations.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In other words, I cannot figure out how Antoni and St. Onge calculated their alternative GDP, nor their alternative deflator.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>[ad_2]<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/archives\/2024\/10\/son-of-shadowstats-government-economic-figures-hide-the-truth-about-the-economy\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ad_1] Heritage Foundation EJ Antoni channels ShadowStats: \u201cGovernment economic figures hide the truth about the economy\u2026\u201d Thang [sic] you,@mises , for highlighting a recent paper<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":263633,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}