« Football games make us angry | Main | Review of John Gray's *Black Mass* »
Assorted links
3. An amazing map, via Bryan Caplan
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 17, 2008 at 11:16 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
I live in NJ and it is amazing that the state's GDP is comparable to Russia's. I wonder if the politicians in Russia are any better?
Posted by: Rich Berger at Jan 17, 2008 11:57:43 AM
The map is flattering to the U.S. because it's based on market exchange rates. Jonathan Schwarz posted a list of quotes from the World Bank, OECD, and IMF saying that international comparisons should ideally be done using purchasing-power parity figures. Is that true? Is this map somewhat economically illiterate?
Wikipedia has a list of the states compared to countries by PPP. New Jersey's economy is about one-quarter the size of Russias on that list.
Posted by: Noumenon at Jan 17, 2008 12:18:09 PM
That map is VERY wrong. For example, it says that Russia's GDP is comparable to New Jersey's, and that Delaware's GDP is comparable to Romania's.
However, here are the real GDPs, according to the 2007 CIA World Factbook (for the countries) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (for the states):
Russia's GDP - $1.7 trillion
New Jersey's GDP - $453 billion
Romania's GDP - $202 billion
Delaware's GDP - $60 billion
BEA stats (scroll down to Table 5): http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/gdp_state/gsp_newsrelease.htm
2007 CIA World Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html
And those are just the two that I immediately looked up because they looked so wrong. I'm sure there are MANY more mistakes. It would be interesting to see a real map like that, though.
Posted by: TV at Jan 17, 2008 12:20:07 PM
Improved version at apostropher.
Revisions at strangemaps.
Posted by: Zippy at Jan 17, 2008 12:29:07 PM
I guess I screwed up the second link.
Posted by: Zippy at Jan 17, 2008 12:46:55 PM
For more renamed map spin-offs, check:
http://lmonasterio-en.blogspot.com/search/label/Maps
A few months ago, I became quite addicted to renaming maps, but now I am clean.
Posted by: Leonardo Monasterio at Jan 17, 2008 1:20:09 PM
There is a distinction between GDPs evaluated at exchange rates and at purchasing power parity. I believe this map is the former. Often the PPP measure is used to compare living standards, but if you're comparing sizes of economies arguably the market price method is better.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Jan 17, 2008 1:39:05 PM
"Often the PPP measure is used to compare living standards, but if you're comparing sizes of economies arguably the market price method is better." - So, what is the argument? It does seem by that method that the U.S. dollar falling makes the U.S. GDP much smaller, yet that seems very counter-intuitive.
Posted by: roger at Jan 17, 2008 7:28:40 PM
"Often the PPP measure is used to compare living standards, but if you're comparing sizes of economies arguably the market price method is better." - So, what is the argument? It does seem by that method that the U.S. dollar falling makes the U.S. GDP much smaller, yet that seems very counter-intuitive.
Posted by: roger at Jan 17, 2008 7:30:13 PM
There is a distinction between GDPs evaluated at exchange rates and at purchasing power parity. I believe this map is the former.
Ah. I thought it had said that it was using PPP, but now I see that that was written in a comment, not the original post. No wonder it looked so strange!
Posted by: TV at Jan 17, 2008 11:06:42 PM
Better late than never, but voluntaryXchange had that map up almost a year ago, along with another one showing how many states you have to cobble together to equal the GDP of, say, China or Japan.
Check it out at (http://voluntaryxchange.typepad.com/voluntaryxchange/2007/02/extremely_cool_.html)
Posted by: Dave Tufte at Jan 17, 2008 11:44:28 PM
Wonder what things would really look like if we got rid of the whacky hedonic used at BLS/BEA and did
an apples to apples comparison of GDP--pick PPP or exchange rates.....U.S. boosters seem more and more like
Blanche DuBois these days.......
Posted by: Robert C at Jan 18, 2008 2:37:43 AM
Bad history on the marriage front. Marriage amongst the non-gentry (ie the bulk of the population) was by choice, for companionship, and made when women were in their mid-to-late twenties.
Posted by: Tracy W at Jan 18, 2008 8:07:33 AM
The economist as Scrooge
Hanson responds to Mansfield:
“Let us assume you [Mansfield] are right, that giving creates virtue, and that the usual concern about appearances is less virtuous. Even so, by our (economists') evaluation criteria, the question is: how much do people actually want to be virtuous in your sense? We don't recommend policy that creates virtue unless people actually want virtue; if people mostly want appearances, then we want people to get appearances.”
Hanson is just reinforcing Mansfield’s critique. The desire for virtue is the desire for happiness, the desire to live well. To admit that economics is indifferent to living well is pretty much to admit Mansfield’s charge.
There was a time when economics was part of philosophy – part of the inquiry into the best life and the best regime. That’s how Adam Smith saw it. Too bad so many economists want to sever the part from the whole, as Hanson does. That opens them up to Mansfield’s critique, which is that they are too narrow to be relevant or useful.
Posted by: Kent Guida at Jan 18, 2008 9:20:38 AM
