19 Dec 2012

Polish Data Bask

All Posts 24 Comments

Can anyone point me to “official” statistics for Polish consumer price inflation and GDP growth from, say, 2000 onward?

24 Responses to “Polish Data Bask”

  2. Reply
    L. Vales says:
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    Eurostat is pretty much official:
    HICP: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/hicp/data/database (pick the index you want and then use the “Select Data” menu to get the time span and the countries);
    GDP: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/national_accounts/data/database (the methodology is about the same)

  3. Reply
    Ivan Ivanov says:
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    http://www.stat.gov.pl/gus/5840_1638_ENG_HTML.htm
    http://www.stat.gov.pl/gus/5840_3663_ENG_HTML.htm

    The Polish version of the GDP stats goes back to before 2000.
    I guess the IMF link from Dan provides the data in a more readable format, but if for some reason you want the data from the Polish statistical office, let me know and I can extract, and send it to you.

    • Reply
      Bob Murphy says:
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      It has to do with Sumner’s quicksand at the end of this blog post…

      • Reply
        Ivan Ivanov says:
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        Oh dear…
        So low interest rates don’t mean an easy money policy, but a drop in the exchange rate does?
        And if I remember correctly, our economists explained it by capital flight, rather then anything to do with monetary policy.

        On the other hand, I have a feeling the high praises for Balcerowicz are a bit over the top (I haven’t read the article yet). We didn’t avoid a bubble, as there was a housing boom and bust. From a guy on the street perspective, money was definitely easy in 2000-2007 (I’m in my late 20’s and most of my generation is in debt).

        So… I dunno, I wouldn’t fight Sumner on the specifics of what happened in Poland, because there’s more to it then meets the eye. I’d focus on his slippery definitions of easy and tight monetary policy instead.
        If you like, I can put you in touch with some Polish Austrians, and they might have a better grasp of the data, and what happened here.
        I’m pretty sure they heard about you, and would be honored to help you out 🙂

        • Reply
          Bob Murphy says:
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          Thanks Ivan. I’m not going to make too big a deal out of it, because there’s no smoking gun. One thing that does puzzle me though: It looks like the National Bank of Poland’s assets were constant from about 2001 – 2006. And yet you guys had booming real growth and 2+% price inflation. What’s the deal here?

          • Reply
            Ivan Ivanov says:
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            I’m not sure…
            On the other hand the monetary base increased by almost 50% during that time (http://www.nbp.pl/homen.aspx?f=/en/statystyka/miary/miary.html), so I guess there was monetary expansion by other means? Outright money printing?

            I’m just an Austrian fan, not an actual economist, or even an economics student, and I remember I was scratching my head several times, back when I tried to apply what I learned from the Mises Institute to the data from the NBP.

          • Reply
            acepl says:
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            Warming over old news…

            Short answer is:
            1. Inflation numbers are as reliable as BLS’ CPI numbers of US in 2012 (that is: manipulated as hell)
            2. Exports picking up abroad (our goods are more attractive as they are cheaper than domestic)
            3. investments from EU are kicking in in full
            4. Euro 2012 expenses were also noticeable.
            5, 10% of the population is working abroad and supports remaining in the country.

        • Reply
          Tel says:
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          Is it possible to have capital flight year after year for a decade or more?

          • Reply
            Ivan Ivanov says:
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            Oh, you’re probably right.
            Whatever decade-long trend there was, was pobably due to monetary policy.
            I was referring to the sharp drop at the beginning of the crisis.

  4. Reply
    Ivan Ivanov says:
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    I’m quite excited by the way, if this leads to an article, it’s going to be really nice to hear your perspective about my neighborhood 🙂

  5. Reply
    Tel says:
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    http://www.economywatch.com/economic-statistics/country/Poland/

    You can visit each year (scroll to the bottom of the page, goes back to 1980) but real data only goes to 2010, other years are forecasts for some reason. They merge a lot of sources,

    There’s probably a bunch of other places to hunt up the recent years.

      • Reply
        Bob Murphy says:
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        Thanks Tel but I’ve been burned by using these aggregator-type sites before, so that’s why I try to get something “official” like IMF or Eurostat.

        • Reply
          guest says:
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          Can I just say that citing IMF seems really foul to me?

          Maybe it would be good to not encourage these psychopaths, given that they want to violate our countries’ national sovereignty.

          Ron Paul does it, too. Argh.

          • Reply
            Joseph Fetz says:
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            You *do* realize that most of the libertarian commenters on this blog, and Bob himself, are anarchists, right? So “national” anything isn’t exactly seen as a positive.

            However, I do know what you mean, but you’re not going to get anywhere with that argument.

            While it is true that they can fudge the numbers with certain assumptions, for the most part they are very consistent in their procedures. I don’t much care about the absolute figures, I am looking for particular trends in particular areas, so as long as the data is comparable and the procedural actions are consistent, then they work pretty good for use in the citing of data.

            Certainly, there are no mathematical constants that can be gleaned from this data, but it does help with the reinforcement of proper theory. Also, there just aren’t any other entities that compile this much information AND reveal it publicly.

            Can you name some better sources for economic data that are publicly available?

            • Reply
              guest says:
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              You *do* realize that most of the libertarian commenters on this blog, and Bob himself, are anarchists, right? So “national” anything isn’t exactly seen as a positive.

              Point taken.
              😀

              While it is true that they can fudge the numbers with certain assumptions, for the most part they are very consistent in their procedures.

              I’m not concerned about them fudging or not fudging the numbers, just that they would be seen as relevant.

              They, themselves, are getting the numbers from somewhere, so why do we need them?

              It gives me the willies.

              But you’re right that it won’t affect whether or not the numbers, themselves, are reliable.

          • Reply
            Bob Murphy says:
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            But guest, the point of this procedure is to show Scott Sumner if his worldview doesn’t work. I can’t use ShadowStats, because Scott will say, “Those are paranoid numbers.”

        • Reply
          Tel says:
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          They are easy to use and I’m lazy.

          I know, I know, that’s the way things got bad in the first place. Anyhow, doesn’t hurt to at least have a quick second check.

  8. Reply
    acepl says:
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    Hi Bob,
    Here’s the link for the polish version of BLS. And some other agencies.
    http://www.stat.gov.pl/gus/index_ENG_HTML.htm
    If there are problems with navigation lemme know.
    will pull for you what is needed However i have to caution that especially inflation information is heavy downsized. mainly via good basket manipulation… “national”…

  9. Reply
    luk says:
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    http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&plugin=0&language=en&pcode=tipslm10&tableSelection=1
    Nominal unit labour cost – this might be important.

    http://inwestor.msp.gov.pl/portal/si/338/21971/Transfery_pieniezne_polskich_emigrantow_i_ich_znaczenie_dla_polskiej_gospodarki.html
    If there is a smoking gun – this is it. Emigration (red bar) embarrasses EU (blue bar) by their private money transfers.

    Z obliczeń CAS wynika, że w obecnej perspektywie finansowej UE na lata 2007-2013 realna wielkość środków dostępnych dla Polski to około 5,6 mld euro rocznie, czyli suma zbliżona do wartości przekazów pieniężnych w „najlepszych” latach.
    Private transfers from people that emigrated allmost match EU money available for Poland. Mind you that there are numerous ineficiencies and obstacles when you try to get money form EU, like total down payment (they tend to give returns) which fuels debt to local and central goverment, private individuals too. Large portion is simply wasted, some of it was not taken (mostly because of beurocracy cost), some ghost firms sprang up in the process, because EU is “investing in R&D” You know the drill.
    I’ll try to fingd original paper if you’re interested.
    ps. love Your work 😀

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