GDP (year-on-year, quarter on-quarter)

choi

Edward White, Sun Yu and Tom Mitchell, China Warns over Uneven Pace of Recovery; Modest second-quarter growth brings pressure for looser fiscal policy. Financial Times, July 16, 2021, at page 4.
http://www.ftchinese.com/interactive/44311/en?exclusive

the first two paragraphs:

"The pace of China's economic recovery rose modestly in the second quarter after signs of sluggishness in the world's second-biggest economy had stoked expectations of greater policy support.

"On a quarter-on-quarter basis, China's gross domestic product grew 1.3 per cent in the three months to the end of June, up from a revised 0.4 per cent expansion in the previous quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday [July 15]. Economists had predicted quarter-on-quarter growth of 1 to 1.2 per cent, according to polls by Bloomberg and Reuters.

"Second quarter GDP was 7.9 per cent higher than a year earlier, compared with year-on-year growth of 18.3 per cent in the first quarter. The high growth in the first quarter [high relative to 1Q20, not 4Q20] reflected the halt in economic activity in early 2020 after the Covid-19 pandemic erupted in central China and forced the government to impose a nationwide lockdown.

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest. What caught my attention is, in this example, the huge difference between you and sos saa.
(b) Japan, UK, US and countries in European Union reports GDP growth on season-on-season (or season-over-season) basis (with saa explained in (3)), whereas China, Taiwan and Singapore on year-on-year basis.
(c) Reporting if Quarterly Real GDP Growth Rate. Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI), Singapore 新加坡贸易与工业部, Oct 14, 2020
https://www.mti.gov.sg/note14Oct20
("There are three ways to calculate quarterly real GDP growth rates:
        1. Year-on-year (yoy) growth rate – this measures the percentage change in real GDP from the corresponding quarter in the previous year
        2. Quarter-on-quarter seasonally-adjusted (qoq sa) growth rate – this measures the percentage change in real GDP from the preceding quarter, and is calculated from seasonally-adjusted real GDP data
        3. Quarter-on-quarter seasonally-adjusted annualised (qoq saa) growth rate – this extrapolates the qoq sa growth rate in a quarter over the next three quarters to obtain the change in real GDP over a one-year period to facilitate comparisons with annual or yoy growth rates

The primary measure of quarterly real GDP growth reported by MTI in its press releases on GDP estimates is the yoy growth rate. Previously, MTI also provided the qoq saa growth rate as supplementary information in its press releases to better enable the identification of turning points in the economic cycle")

(d)
(i) There are advantages and disadvantages for either.

How to Calculate the Annual Growth Rate for Real GDP. Motley Fool, updated on Oct 19, 2016.
https://www.fool.com/knowledge-c ... ate-for-real-g.aspx  

consecutive paragraphs:

"How do the two calculation methods compare?
Over time, the year-on-year rate is much less volatile than the quarter-on-quarter rate and is subject to smaller revisions. When you look at a graph of the quarter-on-quarter rate, it's difficult to make out a trend.

Furthermore, because it compares corresponding quarters, the year-on-year rate is not dependent on the methodology for seasonal adjustments, which are necessary when you are comparing two consecutive quarters.

National statistics offices do not follow a uniform methodology for making seasonal adjustments; year-on-year rates are therefore better suited for international comparisons.

The main advantage of using a quarter-on-quarter growth rate is that is that it easier to identify turning points in the economy, such as the end of a recession/beginning of an expansionary period.

The following graph shows both growth rates for the period 2005 through 2014. You can see that during the Great Recession of 2008-2009, by the time the year-on-year rate (red line) bottomed out, the quarter-on-quarter rate had already rebounded sharply and was close to flat, suggesting the recession was almost over:  
[graphic omittedhere. Please go to the Web page to view it.]
Both methods have strengths and weaknesses (although economic statisticians generally prefer the year-on-year rate). The good news is that any statistical agency worth its salt will publish both rates. Even if they don't, you've now got all the tools necessary to calculate them on your own using GDP figures. But make sure to select the right ones: seasonally and inflation-adjusted is your mantra.

(ii) FRED (in the graphic of the preceding Web page) stands for Federal Reserve Economic Data
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Economic_Data   
(a database maintained by Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis)
(iii)
(A) recession
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession

section 1 Definition:

"In the United States, the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is generally seen as the authority for dating US recessions. The NBER, a private economic research organization [based in Cambridge, Massachusetts], defines an economic recession as: 'a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.'[(footnote) 8] Almost universally, academics, economists, policy makers, and businesses refer to the determination by the NBER for the precise dating of a recession's onset and end.

"In the United Kingdom, recessions are generally defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, as measured by the seasonal adjusted quarter-on-quarter figures for real GDP.[4][5] The same definition is used by member states of the European Union.

(B) M Ayhan Kose, Naotaka Sugawara and Marco E Terrones, Global Recession. Prospects Group, World Bank, March 2020 (Policy Research Working Paper 9172), at page 6
https://documents1.worldbank.org ... obal-Recessions.pdf
("2.2. Methodology
Two approaches are employed to identify the turning points [when does a recession or a recovery start or end] of the global business cycle: a statistical method and a judgmental method. The methods are complementary but employ different information sets. * * *
Statistical Method. * * * The method makes it possible to identify global recessions, defined as taking place when the annual growth rate of per capita global real GDP is negative. However, per capita real GDP growth alone may not be sufficient as an indicator of the cyclical evolution of economic activity. For this reason, the Business Cycle Dating Committees of the US NBER and the Europe-based CEPR (Centre for Economic Policy Research) employ broad sets of economic indicators and apply a 'judgmental method' to identify the turning points of national or regional cycles.
Judgmental Method. * * *")
(C) It is often stated in American media that "recessions are generally defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, as measured by the seasonal adjusted quarter-on-quarter figures for real GDP," as you can see in (d)(iii)(A). In case a country uses year-on-year for its GDP growth rate, it is hard to see a turning point (recession or recovery).

(e) Christina Majaski, Year-Over-Year (YOY). Investopedia, updated Mar 16, 2021
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/y/year-over-year.asp
("YOY calculations are straightforward * * * What's the difference between YOY and YTD? YOY looks at a 12-month change. Year-to-date, or YTD, looks at a change relative to the beginning of the year (usually January 1st).  What if I am interested in comparisons for less than a year? You can compute month-over-month (MoM) or quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) in much the same way as YOY [but the tricky part for QoQ is saa]")

There is no need to read the rest of (e).