7 Chapter Summary
- Economists keep track of the flows of money between sectors with the national income and product
accounts, or national accounts. Households earn income via the factor markets from wages, interest on
bonds, profit accruing to owners from stocks, and rent on land. In addition, they receive government
transfers from the government. Disposable income, total household income minus taxes plus government
transfers, is allocated to consumer spending C and private savings. Via the financial markets, private
savings and foreign lending are channeled to investment spending I, government borrowing, and foreign
borrowing. Government purchases of goods and services G are paid for by the tax revenues and any
government borrowing. Exports X generate an inflow of funds into the country from the rest of the world,
but imports IM lead to an outflow of funds to the rest of the world. Foreigners can also buy stocks and
bonds in the U.S. financial markets.
- Gross domestic product, or GDP, measures the value of all final goods and services produced in the
economy. It does not include the value of intermediate goods and services, but it does include inventories
and net exports (X-IM). It can be calculated in three ways: add up the value added by all producers; add
up all spending on domestically produced final goods and services, leading to the equation GDP =
C+I+G+X-IM, also known as aggregate spending; or add up all the income paid by domestic firms of to
factors production. These three methods are equivalent because in the economy as a whole, total
income paid by domestic firms to factors of production must equal total spending on domestically
produced final goods and services.
- Real GDP is the value of the final goods and services produced calculating using the prices of a selected
base year. Except in the base year, real GDP is not the same as nominal GDP, the value of aggregate
output calculated using current prices. Analysis of the growth rate of aggregate output must use real GDP
because doing so eliminates any change in the value of aggregate output due solely to price changes. Real
GDP per capita is a measure of average aggregate output per person but is not in itself an appropriate
policy goal. U.S. statistics on real GDP are always expressed in chained dollars.
- To measure the aggregate price level, economists calculate the cost of purchasing a market basket. A
price index is the ratio of current cost of that market basket to the cost in a selected base year, multiplied
by 100.
- The inflation rate is the yearly percent change in a price index, typically based on the consumer price
index, CPI, the most common measure of the aggregate price level. A similar index for goods and
services purchased by firms is the producer price index, or PPI. Finally, economists also use the GDP
deflator, which measures the price level by calculating the ratio of nominal to real GDP times 100.