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CHINA's REFORM PERIOD ECONOMIC GROWTH: HOW RELIABLE ARE ANGUS MADDISON's ESTIMATES?
Author(s) -
Holz Carsten A.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
review of income and wealth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.024
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1475-4991
pISSN - 0034-6586
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4991.2006.00177.x
Subject(s) - china , economics , real gross domestic product , period (music) , economic statistics , economy , econometrics , political science , law , physics , acoustics
Chinese economic growth statistics are controversial. In recent years they have been challenged on technical grounds as well as on suspicions of data falsification. Angus Maddison in a 1998 OECD study goes further in that he questions China's long‐run growth statistics and proceeds to provide an alternative time series. His average annual real GDP growth rate for China in the reform period (1978 through 1995) is 2.39 percentage points below the official one. Angus Maddison's revisions were subsequently incorporated into the Penn World Tables; his GDP estimates for China, thus, have found their way into numerous cross‐country studies. This paper critically examines the validity of Angus Maddison's revisions to official data.