On Oct 12, 2010, at 2:19 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
> How did you get 42%? 5/14=.357 which is close to what Krugman
> reports. Governmetn current expenditures are in table 3.16 (currently
> unavailable, but I downloaded it some time ago). GDP, including
> government consumption expenditure is table 1.1.15.
Transfers do not count as part of GDP, since they're not an exchange of money for good or service, but it's disingenuous not to take account of them when measuring government spending. Using GDP as a kind of numeraire for all manner of things over time is pretty conventional. You often see stock market capitalization as a percent of GDP, for example, even though stocks have next to nothing to do with GDP.