Date of Award

1-1-2014

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences

First Advisor

Markus Schneider, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Tracy Mott

Third Advisor

Chiara Piovani

Fourth Advisor

Joshua Hanan

Keywords

China, Data, GDP, Gross domestic product, Growth, Reliability

Abstract

China's rapid economic growth over the past three decades has drawn attention from all over the world. The sources and reliability of the official statistics behind the tremendous growth have been the subject of heated debate among economists. This paper contributes to this data reliability debate by analyzing on the GDP statistics of China and seeks to establish whether or not the official data are valid.

This study begins with a review of the prominent research on the topic. The majority of these studies, reviewed in chapter two, point to a series of inherent contradictions in the official figures, which casts doubt upon the reliability of the data. This chapter also presents a discussion of the methodologies other researchers have used, and identifies the ones appropriate for this particular paper. Chapter Three, reuses the approaches identified in the previous chapter but employs new data and finds that some approaches verify the official statics, while other approaches refute the official statistics. The paper then extends one of the identified methodologies, conducting an empirical analysis on the cointegration relationship between GDP and TEC (total energy consumption) by using the Engle-Granger Augmented Dicky-Fuller Test (EG-ADF test). Based on this, the final chapter concludes with the observation that even though a certain level of fabrication exists, the quality of the official data has been significantly improved. At last, the paper also addresses a few possible reasons for the obtained results, and suggests implications of improving the data reliability.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Lili Yu

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

58 p.

Discipline

Economics, Statistics

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