Real GDP

For the year 5s who are trying to work out real GDP for different countries:

Find a list of figures of GDP for the last few years, e.g.

2000 - $100 billion
2001 - $105 billion
2002 - $110 billion
2003 - $115 billion

We can work out from that the percentage increase in GDP each year
e.g. $105 - $100 = $5
$5 /$100 x 100 = 5%

However, these are only nominal statistics. We need to combine these with the inflation statistics - we minus the inflation rate from the headline figure to get the real rate of growth each year.

Multiply these figures by the first year and you should get a set of figures for real GDP. I know that sounds confusing, but it should be relatively easy in Excel. What it means is that though at first you seem to get a set of figures with growth of:
5%
4.9%
4.8% etc

once you minus inflation from it it will look like:
3%
2.9%
2.8% etc
(those figures aren't precise)

Then you can times those by each year:
$100 x 3% = $103 billion
$103 x 2.9% = $105.9 billion
$105.9 x 2.8% = $108.9 billion

Hope that makes sense.

Mr W