Quit picking on Japan!
August 23rd, 2010Here’s the per capita GDP for the G8 countries (relative to the USA):
You can take two lessons from this chart.
1) Japan hasn’t had bad monetary policy relative to, say, the continental European countries
or
2) Monetary policy just doesn’t matter in the long-run
Also, the more you stare at these real GDP per capita charts, the more you think the 1980s in Japan was an outlier (aka bubble).
August 23rd, 2010 at 11:55 am
zomfg, Excel 97 pivot chart?! Upgrade to 2000 already!
August 23rd, 2010 at 12:01 pm
heh… poor grad student.
I usually use R but I wanted to demonstrate how ridiculously easy it is to look at data in a manner that doesn’t put your favored narrative in best light. BTW, the data is from the penn world tables (publicly available via google search).
August 23rd, 2010 at 1:39 pm
The “lesson” I take from this chart is “Why are these countries converging to 75-80% of per capita US income levels?” Also, “What is Russia doing there?”.
August 23rd, 2010 at 2:54 pm
G8… and I guess your conclusion fits with my #2