According to the latest official data, the UK has seen a much larger fall in GDP during the pandemic than almost any country in Europe. The worst hit economies are actually Greece and Spain. But the UK appears to have suffered much more than France, Germany, Italy, or Sweden. This needs some explaining.
Let’s deal first with differences in how GDP is measured – and especially the impact of the pandemic on the output of the public sector. I first blogged about this back in August and David Smith was kind enough to quote me at the time. Mike Haynes was also one of the first to explore these issues and continues to do excellent work here. More recently, Ed Conway has picked up on this too.
In short, UK statisticians have put a lot more effort into estimating how much activity actually took place in sectors such as public…
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