Gross Domestic Product of the United States in 2009 Research Paper

Gross Domestic Product of the United States in 2009 - Research Paper Example The research "Gross Domestic Product of the United States in 2009" examines how this year’s GDP compares with last year’s GDP both in real and nominal terms. Moreover, based on the limitations of national accounting it is discussed whether GDP provides valuable information for measuring economic activity over time. The table in appendix 1 shows the nominal GDP in billion dollar terms, its annual growth rate, GDP deflator with base year 2005=100, real GDP in billion dollar terms and its growth rate from 1950 to 2009.Real GDP is calculated as the ratio of nominal GDP to GDP deflator. The whole data is collected from the Federal Reserve Bank of St: Louis Economics Research Section. The table shows that both real and nominal GDP have been decelerating at annual growth rate of 1.74 percent and 2.6 percent respectively. 9 big expansions and 10 big recessions can be seen for nominal GDP from figure1. 13 big expansions can be seen from the above figure3. 9 recessions can be counted. The growth has been more or less stable in the last 20 years as compared to 1960-1990 since the peaks and troughs are comparatively low in this period. Figure 2 and figure 4 shows the forecasts for nominal GDP and real GDP growth till 2015. They show highly decelerating growth rates of -2 and -4 percentage respectively for real and nominal GDP growth rates. Though the national accounts system and GDP statistics in USA have been considered as the most developed in the world, many economists have raised serious objections regarding treating GDP as an appropriate measure of economic activity over time.