This morning I noticed a discussion of NGDP growth in China, which has recently picked up slightly:
The commentator at Bloomberg.com suggested that the acceleration in NGDP growth may help to explain why the PBoC has not done any monetary easing in recent months.
Many observers are skeptical about China’s RGDP numbers. It does seem plausible that the RGDP numbers are smoothed, and thus that NGDP more accurately reflects cyclical movements in the Chinese economy.
Question for my British readers: How is Brexit impacting the UK economy so far? This will be a test of “uncertainty” theories of the business cycle—the claim that recessions can be caused by an increase in uncertainty, which hampers investment. Brexit was the mother of all uncertainty shocks. I’m agnostic on those theories, but on balance I think they are modestly overstated. Over at Econlog, I predicted a 0.5% rise in the UK unemployment rate as a result of Brexit. This BBC article suggests the immediate impact has been fairly mild—so far. (Very little post-Brexit data is available.)