Steaming

摘要

It has become conventional wisdom that the world economy is too reliant on America. Yet by some measures, China has accounted for an even bigger share of global growth in recent years. All the more reason, therefore, to worry about claims that China's economy is now overheating and may soon burn out. According to a widely quoted figure (in The Economist, among other places), America accounted for two-thirds of the increase in global GDP between 1995 and 2002. Yet this number is a little misleading. Because it is calculated using market exchange-rates, the rise in the dollar until 2001 inflated America's share of global growth. Now that the euro is rising, the same method implies, bizarrely, that sput- tering Europe has been the main source of global growth this year. It is therefore safer to use GDP figures converted at purchasing-power parity, which are not distorted by exchange-rate swings. Since these adjust for price differences between countries, they also give a relatively smaller weight to America's output.