Tyler Cowen notes a 4% decline in electricity use in China and wonders if this is a more accurate statement on Chinese production than their national income accounts. Reminds me of some early work that Dani Kaufman and Alex Kaliberda did in Ukraine when I was there, trying to estimate the size of underground production. But there it was just that electricity use declined less than official output. However, as pointed out by Lacko, the measure should be of household electricity use when an economy is going through transition like China. Still, the Olympics and their build-up might be a reason to think GDP is declining there.

Labels: economics