More Debate Over Those First-Quarter GDP Numbers

Economists at the San Francisco Fed, and the Federal Reserve Boardโ€™s own economists, are divided over whether first-quarter economic growth numbers present a true picture of the state of the economy, especially during a period of bad weather.

Economists at the San Francisco Fed, and the Federal Reserve Boardโ€™s own economists, are divided over whether first-quarter economic growth numbers present a true picture of the state of the economy, especially during a period of bad weather.

In a new paper released on Monday, the San Francisco Fed suggested the scant increase in first-quarter GDP was due to a failure to apply enough seasonal adjustment:

โ€œThe official estimate of real GDP growth for the first three months of 2015 was shockingly weak. However, such estimates in the past appear to have understated first-quarter growth fairly consistently, even though they are adjusted to try to account for seasonal patterns. Applying a second round of seasonal adjustment corrects this residual seasonality. After this correction, aggregate output grew much faster in the first quarter than reported,โ€ according to the San Francisco Fed paper.

That contradicts a research note from the Fed last week that found โ€œno firm evidenceโ€ of problems with seasonal adjustments, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

AIER Senior Research Fellow Bob Hughes said thereโ€™s no way to know whether the economy will rebound โ€œuntil we get hard data. We think it will. Thereโ€™s some signs of it in the data, but the data continues to be mixed. We have seen a few green shoots.โ€

 

 

 



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