No one asked to see the results, but I thought I'd post them anyway just
in case 1 or 2 people are interested :-)
Based on Dan's idea, I extended the calculation of historical GDP
increases under Democratic presidents vs. Republican presidents. What
I calculated was the average annualized real GDP increase. I cited the
source of GDP data I used in a previous message.
I calculated the increases back to 1853, but I divided the time into
two periods, 1853-1928 and 1929-2002. I chose the first year because
it immediately followed the last Whig president (Millard Fillmore). I
counted Andrew Johnson as a Democrat. The GDP data is more reliable for
the later period. Also, since many of the Democrat's current policies
originated in the New Deal period in the 30's, the second period
compares mostly different Democrat policies than the first.
On the assumption that there may be a delay between the time a new
President takes office and any effect that President has on the GDP,
I calculated the same thing with the entire "array" shifted to later
years by 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 years. At a guess, the 1 or 2 year shift
is probably the most causal, since the President presumably changes
policies in his first year and we see the results in the GDP the year or
two after that.
My calculations for the shifted first period have a slight flaw since
the shift function I used took the values that "fell off" the right end
and "stuffed them" into the left end. But I'm not sure how meaningful
the older data is anyway, so I'm not inclined to fix this. This is not a
problem for the 2nd period results.
Here are the results:
| 1853 - 1928 | 1929 - 2002
shift| Rep Dem | Rep Dem
----------------------------------
0 | 4.0% 1.8% | 1.5% 4.4%
1 | 3.7% 2.4% | 1.4% 4.5%
2 | 3.3% 3.2% | 2.2% 3.9%
3 | 3.3% 3.2% | 2.2% 3.9%
4 | 2.9% 3.7% | 2.3% 3.8%
--
"Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/
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