Chapter 6: Growth Contributions to Quarterly GDP Growth: Slowly Approaching the Goal

The basic idea of economists in economic analysis is to get a picture of the (future) growth of the national economy. In order to achieve this aim, economic indicators are tapped daily for clues as to where the economic journey is heading – namely for GDP growth. While this chapter will focus on the assessment of GDP growth in the current quarter or in the past quarter – i.e. on a forecast for the medium term at most – the following chapters will provide the tools to get an idea of where growth rates may be heading in the next 3–18 months.