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Course: Macroeconomics > Unit 2
Lesson 1: Gross Domestic Product- Circular flow of income and expenditures
- Parsing gross domestic product
- More on final and intermediate GDP contributions
- Investment and consumption
- Income and expenditure views of GDP
- Value added approach to calculating GDP
- Components of GDP
- Expenditure approach to calculating GDP examples
- Examples of accounting for GDP
- Measuring the size of the economy: gross domestic product
- Lesson summary: The circular flow and GDP
- The circular flow model and GDP
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Parsing gross domestic product
In this video, we break down GDP into its components to better understand what's counted in GDP and what's not counted. Created by Sal Khan.
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- Car manufactures Honda, Toyota ..etc. contribute to U.S. GDP with cars made in American Plants but contribute to GNP with these same cars within their home countries. Is that correct?(101 votes)
- would something produced in a U.S. embassy be counted in US GDP?(57 votes)
- Technically, a U.S. embassy is considered part of the U.S., regardless of the country it's housed in, so the services it provides should be counted as U.S. GDP.(45 votes)
- Why would countries care about their GDP anyway? Sorry if its and easy question,I'm new to all this.(18 votes)
- GDP per capita is more revealing than GDP itself. Clearly, China has a huge GDP since they have almost 5 times as many people than the US, but their GDP per capita reflects a poor country with a long way to go in increasing the standard of living of most of its citizens. 1.4 Billion people with half living in poverty. If you looked just at their GDP you would think otherwise.(4 votes)
- The difference between net domestic product What is?(16 votes)
- GDP: see the definition
GNP: GDP + Net income from holdings abroad
NNP: GNP - capital consumption (ie; depreciation)(3 votes)
- The meaning of a "final" good/service is a bit hazy, what does it mean exactly?
E.g. my bed provides a good night's sleep which allows me to get up in the morning and provide my services efficiently, therefore my bed is an input and not a "final" good. So why is it counted as a "final" good?(4 votes)- Your bed would be considered a final good because you are the consumer so you are therefor using the bed for your own enjoyment or use. Your bed wouldn't be considered to be an intermediate good because it is not something that is being payed for to make the product, i.e. your boss doesn't pay for your bed.
Hope this helps.(23 votes)
- in06:31, you talk about any transaction that is not trackable(what is that?) is not GDP. So am I right by saying pension and scholarships are not GDP?(5 votes)
- The non trackable things include mainly the black market, like drug sales, payments for weapons, prostitutes, things paid with tax evasion, etc...
If you produce a good or service at home, it's not included either. You can make your son do the washing up without adding any GDP value (though you would pay someone to do the same, that would be in the GDP), or you can grow fruits, vegetables in your garden and eat them, that's not part of the GDP either.
Pensions and scholarships are not part of the GDP, but for a different reason. Government spending is included, but only if the government pays for a good or service (eg.: salary of a teacher, soldier, etc...), but pension and scholarships are not paid for goods or services. They are called transfers, and they are never included in GDP. It is so, because transfers are just the transferring of wealth (money) from tax payers to other people, it is not a market transaction.(16 votes)
- Let's say I buy those blue jeans, tear/fade them a little bit, and resell them for $60. Would GDP contribution = $60 or $110? Who is to say what a final good/service is? And how can anyone accurately calculate this (GDP)?(10 votes)
- If you report your activities to the government (if you're doing this regularly as a business you are required to) than the GDP would be $60. If you're doing this on the side and sell without reporting the transaction, your $10 contribution would get missed in the GDP. Only if your business reported the sell of the jeans but not the purchase would GDP record $110 for the jeans (and your business would pay taxes for money for making $60 instead of taxes for making $10).(4 votes)
- So what if the people who made the cotton fabric decided to keep 50% of that for themselves and use the other 50% for jean production? Would the cotton fabric still be considered a contributer to GDP?(7 votes)
- Yes it would be. Taking a real life example, it happens when a firm produces something, that is not a final product, but instead of selling it, it stores it for some time. In that case it is added to the GDP of the current year. Let's say next year they decide to sell it for further processing, then the market value of their product is going to be subtracted from that year's GDP (a service or good is to be counted only once).(4 votes)
- When you comment on hiring an outside person does this include say another child that you pay to watch a younger sibling?(5 votes)
- If you pay taxes after hiring that child, it is definitely part of the GDP. If you do not pay taxes, then it is part of the black market and it is not included in the GDP.
I do not know about the US, but in my country hardly anybody pays the taxes after hiring the neighbour girl for watching over my children, so the general answer is no, it is not included in the GDP in most cases.(7 votes)
- at2:00, sal says gdp can be household expenses or household income, but what if the household saves some money , then wouldn't both of these be different?(4 votes)
- I think Sal is gonna introduce more precisely what GDP exactly is in the coming videos, but in the case you mentioned saving can be seen as part of expenses. Even if you don't spend that money on buying things, you still "give it out", you do something with it. When measuring GDP there is a section where investments/savings (which are actually the same thing) are counted. You had a point there, don't make it prevent you from watching other videos, I'm sure you will understand from the next few videos.(4 votes)
Video transcript
Narrator: In the last
video we took a look at what is probably the
simplest possible economy and it's not even clear
that this economy is even possible; this one person economy. To make it more analogous
to the real world where we have household and we have firms. In this one island this guy set up a firm and he essentially leashed
out all of the factors of production to that firm,
including his own labor. He leased it out, the rent on his labor is essentially his
wages and then he bought all of the goods and services he needed from that same firm. So, his expenditures would be the revenue of that firm and then
the revenue of that firm would be turned into the expenses and the profit of the
firm, so whatever the revenue wasn't used in expenses ended up being profit. Then all of that went back to that one household as income. When we talked about how we would measure the economic activity in this island right over here, how would we measure its gross domestic product, we said, well look we could measure it in multiple different ways. As it's leaving his
hands, the dollars that is going to the firm, you
could view it as the total expenditures, or as it's approaching the firm that's the
same thing as the total revenue for this firm,
total revenue for this simplified, one firm economy. That total revenue is
the same thing as the total expenses plus the
profit for that firm. That's the same thing as this one households income. So, let me write this down. The way we looked at it in the last video, in the very simple
example, GDP was equal to household, household
expenditures which was equal to firm, firm revenues
which was equal to firm expenses, expenses plus profit, which is equal to household income. (writing) household income, household .. I'll just write inc for
income, household income. and of course household income is then, at least in this case right over here, it ended up being equal
to household expenses. What I want to do in this video now is think about it in more general terms. Let's extend it to a more complex economy, to the world we live in and
with that I want to look at the more formal definition for GDP. This is the more formal definition of GDP, or I guess you could say
the definition of GDP and it's the market
value of all final goods and services, and we're
going to talk about what each of these things
mean ... of all, of all final goods and services. I'll underline all
separately, all final goods and services. Let me do that in a different color. ... all final goods and
services produced within a country, produced within a country in a given period. You can have a GDP for a month, you could have a GDP
for a quarter of a year which would be three
months or you could have the GDP in a given year. I guess you could even have GDP over a 10 year period, but it tends to be we always think of GDP
in terms of annual GDP or quarterly GDP or sometimes even ... so there are some estimates
of even monthly GDP but it tends to be annually or quarterly. Let's parse a little
bit more because these little terms can be interesting. The first one I'd like
to parse is the idea of market value. (writing) Market value. What this is saying is we
need someway to measure what we've produced
and the best way we can do it is say, how much
benefit are people getting and what they're willing
to pay for it in the market is the best way that we can measure how much benefit they're actually getting out of it. For example, if someone in the year, I don't know, if an avocado was produced, if an avocado is produced in some farm and also an orange is produced, and an orange is produced, we won't say that for each of these, we won't say, oh GDP is
increased to buy one fruit we'd look at the market value for it. If the market value of this avocado is $1 and the market value of
this orange is 0.50 cents then by producing this fruit the GDP has increased by 0.50 cents by producing this avocado its GDP has increased by a dollar. In the next year, maybe there's whatever, demand for avocado's goes down or whatever and people pay less for
it and the market value of an incremental avocado is 0.50 cents, then in the next year
even though the actual number of fruit that
was produced is the same as the previous year, now all of a sudden the contribution from
avocado's might be the same as a contribution from oranges. It really depends on the market value. Then we can focus on this
all, the market value of all goods and services,
all goods and services. We would do all the different avocado's and oranges, but we would do computers, we would do cars, we would do tires, and we're doing services,
so if you have help at home, if you go to the doctor; the market value of all of
those things are going to be put in to GDP. This won't include some things. This does not include,
this does not include illegal things. If someone sells someone else drugs we're not keeping track of it. Some would argue that maybe it should be kept track of in some
way, that you have this kind of black market in things, but you're not keeping track of illegal, (writing) illegal activity. And you're also not keeping track of goods and services that are produced within the household and consumed
within the household. For example, if you hire an outside person to babysit your child
that would be considered part of GDP, that is
a service that you are paying for, but if you,
yourself, are babysitting your children that is not
going to be considered in GDP. If I start a lawn-mowing business and I go mow other people's lawns, or maybe before my wife and I were dating, she used to pay me to mow my lawns then it would be included in GDP, but maybe once we get
married I just mow her lawn because we're in the same family now then it will not be included in GDP. All does include pretty
much everything that can be tracked, anything where there is an exchange of money, there's some payment between two parties for
that good or service. Now a really interesting thing and this is something I
used to find confusing when I first got exposed to GDP, is the whole notion of
final goods and services. To understand this, let's think about, let's think about how
jeans might be produced. You have a cotton farmer, a cotton farmer and there's some service
that needs to be performed so whatever some farming,
some labor that needs to be performed. Let's say that that is $5 of labor and let's say that some
land has to be rented. Let's say that that is $5
of ... I'll just make it a different number, $4 of land. (writing) $4 of land. There are other inputs,
but we don't have to go into all the details. With that, there's going
to be some electricity and things like that, but
we won't count all of it. You can produce some cotton,
just the plant cotton. (writing) you can produce,
you can produce some cotton, some raw cotton. That raw cotton is worth,
the market value of that raw cotton is worth,
let's say it's worth $10. So, it's $10 worth of raw cotton. Then you can take that raw cotton and you could combine
it with some more labor (writing) with some more labor so let's say you combine
that with another, I don't know, $6 of labor. (writing) $6 of labor and it would also probably require some machinery and electricity
and things like that, but I won't factor all of
those things in just now. We don't need them to
get the point across. If I do that, if I combine the $10, this intermediate good
with the $6 of labor then all of a sudden I
can produce cotton thread. (writing) I can produce, I
can produce cotton thread. That cotton, the worth of the market value of that cotton thread
let's say is now $20. (writing) is now $20 And maybe there is another
intermediate good there, maybe it's some dye. We'll put the dye in
later, let's do the dye in later. I have a $20 thread,
and let's say I can take that $20 thread. (writing) I can take that $20 thread, stay with white just
because I started there. I can take that $20
thread and I can put in some more labor, maybe
I can take $10 of labor (writing) $10 of labor and then I can essentially create, it will essentially create $30 worth of, $30 of cotton fabric. (writing) $30 worth of cotton fabric. Then I can take that $30
worth of cotton fabric (writing) $30 worth of cotton fabric plus some more labor, let's
say another $5 of labor. (writing) $5 of labor and let's say we're also going to put in $1 of dye. (writing) $1 of dye right over here. In the process I can create, I can create the market value, let's say this is $50 worth of blue jeans. (writing) $50 worth, worth of, blue jeans, blue jeans. I do this all over the course of the year, so the period in question. So the period for this
one I'll assume the period is a year, so it's all
happening over the course of the period in question. We're talking about the GDP in 2012, this is all happening in 2012. What would be the contribution to GDP. If we didn't have the word final here, we just had the market value of all goods and services then we would add this $5 to this $4 to this $10 to this $6 and because of the
production of this jeans we would get a very, very large number, a very, very large contribution to GDP. But that would be, not
even double counting that would be triple, or quadrupling, or quintuple counting
the value that's actually being created because all of this value is essentially being
created for in this end $50. The actual contribution
to GDP you would only put the final good, so you
wouldn't include all of these other intermediary goods and services, you would just say this
whole chain of event results in a $50 increase in GDP. In another video we'll
talk about what happens if they don't get to this
point during the course of the year, if we just stop at one of the intermediary goods. Assuming you get to this
point, you just include the final good in GDP. This last part of it is,
produced within a country. (writing) produced within a country. This is, you might have heard GNP, gross national product and that's the main difference. GDP says, let's say
we're talking about the United States, that's my best attempt at drawing the United States. GDP says look, if it was produced inside the country, if it was
produced inside the country, we don't care who it was produced by. It could have been
produced by someone from Mexico, or it could have been produced by someone from Canada, it
could have been a factory that's owned by the Chinese, but if it was produced within the borders
of the United States it gets counted as GDP. (writing) It gets counted as GDP. If an American, if an American who's an American national goes overseas and produces something,
that is not counted as GDP. If an American owns a
firm in another country and that firm in the
other country produces something, that is not the GDP. When you focus on peoples' nationality that is GNP. Not to confuse things,
but if you wanted to focus on GNP then you do
care about the earnings of American nationals and so you wouldn't count the Canadian, but you would include the American who's making money overseas. GDP fairly simple idea,
you say what's being produced within these boundaries, we don't care who's doing the producing and what their actual nationality is, and we're going to ignore production by that nationality outside of these borders.