|
Hier noch der Artikel zu #102 Wenn die USA in die Binsen geht, dann können wir strampeln wie wir wollen, das hilft dann nichts. In 2002, business spending on computers and other technology equipment rose 18.3 percent. On second thought, maybe such spending didn`t rise at all. Welcome to the strange and sometimes misleading world of government statistics on technology. Every quarter, the U.S. Commerce Department calculates how much businesses invest in tech equipment and software. The numbers are a key component of gross domestic product -- total output of goods and services -- the most widely watched indicator of the nation`s economic health. But far be it for the government to do anything as straightforward as toting up total spending on tech gear and leaving it at that. Instead, statisticians mark up actual outlays to take into account tech products` constantly rising quality. As computers get more powerful with faster processors, bigger hard drives and more memory, that translates into higher numbers for computer spending, even if the actual dollars that cross the table remain the same. "Think of it as tracking investments in computing power, not the actual money spent on computers," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Ernst Berndt. Economists call such adjustments hedonic, which, interestingly, is related to the word "hedonism.`` The connection is that bigger, better, badder computers supposedly give us more pleasure. Experts say these quality adjustments make sense when tracking the overall course of the economy. The power of our economy doesn`t depend on the absolute number of things we make. Rather, it is a function of what we can do with what we produce. "If you want to look at standard of living or productivity, you do need to adjust those numbers," said Paul Chwelos, a professor of management at the University of British Columbia. For example, take a casting machine that 30 years ago produced 100 steel beams an hour, to choose an arbitrary number. Today, the descendant of that machine can make 1,000 beams an hour or more. We may produce the same number of beam-making machines in 2003 as we did in 1973. But today`s machines can make 10 times as many beams as those of 1973. It would be wrong to calculate the size of our economy based on the number of casting machines we manufacture without taking into account the greater productive power of those machines. Likewise, if computers can process vastly more information than they could a decade ago, that should be reflected in bigger output numbers. "Gross domestic product is a concept of how much the nation is producing, " said Mark Doms, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. "The number of computer boxes may be the same, but they are better." All well and good. The problem arises when naive analysts try to draw conclusions about tech sector business conditions from the gross domestic product data. "The gross domestic product data can significantly overstate what`s happening with sales of tech equipment," said John Lonski, chief economist with the research firm Moody`s Investors Service. For example, last year`s 18.3 percent rise in business spending on tech equipment looks pretty good until you realize that the growth was largely a product of statistical adjustments for quality improvements. Luckily, the Commerce Department also keeps track of actual dollars invested. Those data show that spending on computers and related gear was unchanged, staying at $74. 2 billion in both 2001 and 2002. To confuse matters, the Commerce Department calls the adjusted numbers real and the actual dollars spent nominal. That difference between the so-called real and nominal numbers clears up a mystery of the past few years. Even as the government was saying that real tech spending was rising, manufacturers were moaning about falling sales. "There was stuff going on in the data that looked weird when you compared it with vendor results," said George Shiffler, principal analyst at the technology research firm Gartner. Savvy researchers wouldn`t dream of using the adjusted spending numbers to analyze company results. "You don`t pay yourself in real GDP, and you can`t take real GDP to lunch," Lonski said. Moreover, tech companies themselves don`t put much stock in the gross domestic product numbers. "To my knowledge, performance improvements in processing power have never figured in Hewlett-Packard`s analysis of market strength," said spokesman Brian Humphries. "We focus on units shipped in a given period." Still, misleading interpretations of the data are sometimes fed to the public by uninformed commentators. Wall Street analysts and economics writers often cite adjusted data on technology spending, thereby exaggerating the sector`s gains. "People often misunderstand our numbers," said Larry Moran, a spokesman for the Commerce Department`s Bureau of Economic Analysis. Earlier this year, for example, the Federal Reserve -- which of all institutions ought to know better -- noted in its annual report to Congress a 25 percent increase in spending on computers "in real terms" from the fourth quarter of 2001 to the fourth quarter of 2002. The unadjusted increase was far less, about 9 percent. This year, tech spending is genuinely on the rise, no matter how you measure it. Companies searching for productivity improvements are upgrading computers and buying software. Business in Silicon Valley is picking up. But the boomlike 40.3 percent annualized increase in spending on computers and related equipment during the first nine months of 2003 turns into a still impressive, but much smaller 23.4 percent jump when measured in actual dollars, according to Moran. Some economists worry that the quality adjustments for technology products sometimes overstate the rate of growth of the economy as a whole. They question how much of the third quarter`s 7.2 percent annualized growth of gross domestic product was due to quality adjustments for technology products. To address that concern, the Commerce Department noted in its third- quarter estimate of gross domestic product that adjusted spending on computers accounted for 0.5 percentage point of growth during the period. Because actual dollar sales rose sharply during the quarter, quality adjustments apparently had only a marginal effect on the overall growth figure. E-mail Sam Zuckerman at szuckerman@sfchronicle.com. ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle |
|
| aus der Diskussion: | Finanzpolitik: Die USA als Warnung? |
| Autor (Datum des Eintrages): | Joerver (19.01.04 13:42:40) |
| Beitrag: | 105 von 1,061 (ID:11889964) |
| Alle Angaben ohne Gewähr © wallstreetONLINE | |