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Anyone know the answer to this? I emailed Bradley Schiller on this and his response is below.
Cyril Morong
Dr. Schiller:
In your book "The Economy Today" (9E), you have statistical tables on the inside covers. For the 1960s, you show the United States with more exports just about every year than imports. But on the opposite page, where the figures are adjusted for inflation, you show trade deficits. How is this possible? If you adjust both imports and exports for inflation, would they not each change in the same proportion, leaving trade surpluses? Thank you for your note. At first, I thought you might have uncovered a
typo. However, I went back and checked The Economic Report of the President for 2004. Sure enough, it has positive net exports in nominal terms and negative net exports in real terms. Actually, the ERP doesn't fill in the Net Exports column for those years; it only gives the gross flows. I did the subtraction myself (correctly!). My suspicion is that a different price index is used for imports, skewing the numbers. |
