Is Russia's economy stronger than they say it is?
Jon Hellevig writes: I don't know why Russia does this. They reported Q1 GDP growth of 0.5%. But they said the GDP deflator was 8.5%. GDP deflator is the factor by which you diminish the nominal GDP growth. The idea is that it would show the "real growth" of output instead of price inflation. In this methodological theory you would only show as output i…