This is the basis of a new paper by Peter St. Save with EJ Antoni. I was trying to find a deflator that would show that US GDP in 2024Q2 is 2.5% below 2019Q1 levels. Based on their discussion in their paper, and the video of Dr. St. Onge, I tried to calculate a consumption deflator based on housing prices and housing costs, using the price of a Big Mac (which Dr. St. Onge recommends in his video as an alternative to official statistics or PWT data), and fast food prices (especially, the food portion away from home/limited CPI resources).
Figure 1: GDP in Ch.2017$ (bold black), using an alternative deflator method, housing-in-PCE weights (blue), 2017 fast food$ (green), 2017 Big Macs (brown ), and in 2017% per Antoni -St.Onge (red square), all in billions. Big Mac prices are translated sequentially. The NBER has defined recession days as shaded in gray. Source: BEA, BLS, NBER, and author’s statistics.
A drop in fast food prices seems to be coming closer to Antoni-St. Save an estimate.
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