FINANCIAL TIMES: US economic history will be rewritten this week, as the most far-reaching methodological changes in years will add the equivalent of a country the size of Belgium to output in the world’s largest economy.
The most important change by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, to be announced on Wednesday, will be to start counting spending on research, development and copyrights as investment, and reflect pension deficits for the first time. Combined they are expected to add 3 per cent to gross domestic product…
“We are carrying these major changes all the way back in time – which for us means to 1929 – so we are essentially rewriting economic history,” Brent Moulton, who manages the national accounts at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, told the Financial Times in an interview in April…. (more)
