This seminar presents the use of Gross National Disposable Income in Pacific regions.
Gross National Disposable Income (GNDI) is a better measure of economic performance than either Gross National Income (GNI) or Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but it is rarely used. The Pacific is the only region where using GNDI matters, and there it matters both a lot and increasingly. The use of GNDI highlights the economic uniqueness of the PICs and reveals a world-leading Pacific growth spurt in the 2010s, driven by increases in fishing license revenue and remittance income. The use of GNDI is also critical for our economic understanding of the Pacific, as it provides a framework within which competing economic diagnoses and strategies for the region can be understood. For all these reasons, GNDI should be used routinely to headline any growth analysis of the Pacific. However, the treatment of foreign aid in the balance of payments needs to be improved in some countries, while some others need to report balance of payments data more promptly.
Read the discussion paper here: https://devpolicy.org/publications/gndi-and-the-pacific/
Event Speakers
Rubayat Chowdhury
Rubayat Chowdhury is a macroeconomist with more than ten years of experience working on monetary policy, growth, and economic development in emerging market economies.
Stephen Howes
Professor Stephen Howes is Director of the Development Policy Centre. He has a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics.
He served in various positions for a decade at the World Bank before becoming AusAID’s first Chief Economist in 2005.
He is now Professor of Economics at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU.