GDP deflator

In economics, the GDP deflator (implicit price deflator) is a measure of the money price of all new, domestically produced, final goods and services in an economy in a year relative to the real value of them. It can be used as a measure of the value of money. GDP stands for gross domestic product, the total monetary value of all final goods and services produced within the territory of a country over a particular period of time (quarterly or annually). Like the consumer price index (CPI), the GDP deflator is a measure of price inflation/deflation with respect to a specific base year; the GDP deflator of the base year itself is equal to 100. Unlike the CPI, the GDP deflator is not based on a fixed basket of goods and services; the "basket" for the GDP deflator is allowed to change from year to year with people's consumption and investment patterns. In most systems of national accounts the GDP deflator measures the ratio of nominal (or current-price) GDP to the real (or chain volume) measure of GDP. The formula used to calculate the deflator is: The nominal GDP of a given year is computed using that year's prices, while the real GDP of that year is computed using the base year's prices. The formula implies that dividing the nominal GDP by the real GDP and multiplying it by 100 will give the GDP Deflator, hence "deflating" the nominal GDP into a real measure. It is often useful to consider implicit price deflators for certain subcategories of GDP, such as computer hardware. In this case, it is useful to think of the price deflator as the ratio of the current-year price of a good to its price in some base year.