Does growth reflect good and bad dictators, or just good and bad statisticians?

Bad statisticians make a lot of measurement mistakes. Average growth over 1960-2008 might have zero mistake ON AVERAGE, but there will randomly be some countries with a string of exaggerated growth rates. Other countries will randomly have a string of underestimated growth rates. So the variance of growth will be higher the worse the data quality – which is exactly what we see in the picture.

Of course, I am not saying China or Singapore or Taiwan have high growth (and Liberia has horrible growth) ONLY because of measurement error. Other indicators confirm the East Asian booms — but are we really sure growth was 6 percent per capita per year, instead of 4 percent pread moreer capita per year?

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