By How Much Did the Australian Economy Outperform?

Updating our earlier model of Australian GDP growth for yesterday’s data revisions yields a forecast for the March quarter of -0.5% q/q compared to an actual result of 0.4% q/q.  So growth was 0.9 percentage points stronger than a forecast based solely on US GDP growth.  This outperformance is even larger if we believe the expenditure measure of GDP (1.1% q/q), but turns into underperformance if we believe the conceptually equivalent production measure, which came in at -0.9% q/q.

Of all the country-specific factors that might account for this outperformance, discretionary fiscal policy is likely to have been the least of them.

posted on 04 June 2009 by skirchner in Economics, Financial Markets, Fiscal Policy

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