SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 26 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 13 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Each of the following statements includes two terms. In three cases, the two terms mean the same as each other. In which of the following cases do the two terms NOT mean the same as each other?

(a)The base period and the reference period
(b)Changes in real GDP and the GDP deflator
(c)Nominal GDP and GDP at current prices
(d)Real GDP and GDP at constant prices

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Real GDP and the GDP deflator measure different things, so option (b) is the mismatched pair.

A change in real GDP is a change in quantity: output valued at fixed base-year prices, so only the volume of goods can move it.

The GDP deflator is a price index — deflator = (nominal GDP ÷ real GDP) × 100 — and it measures how much of a rise in the money value of output is price rather than output.

The other three pairs are each two names for one thing, which leaves this one as the exception.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
The base period and the reference period — Base period and reference period both name the year an index is measured against. At this level the two terms are used interchangeably, so the pair does mean the same.
(c)
Nominal GDP and GDP at current prices — Nominal GDP is output valued at the prices of the current year, which is precisely what 'GDP at current prices' says. One quantity, two names.
(d)
Real GDP and GDP at constant prices — Real GDP is output valued at the prices of a fixed base year, which is what 'GDP at constant prices' means. Again one idea under two labels.

Concept

National income accounting has to separate two reasons a money total can rise: more goods, or dearer goods.

Nominal GDP, or GDP at current prices, mixes the two. Real GDP, or GDP at constant prices, freezes prices at a base year, so any movement in it is movement in output alone.

Divide one by the other and the quantities cancel, leaving pure price change. That ratio times 100 is the GDP deflator, a broader price index than the CPI or the WPI because it covers everything counted in GDP rather than a fixed basket.

Statisticians do sometimes separate a price-reference period from a weight-reference period when constructing an index.

This question is written at school level, where base period and reference period name the same base year, and only the real-GDP-and-deflator pair is genuinely mismatched.

Key facts

GDP deflator = (nominal GDP ÷ real GDP) × 100.
Nominal GDP is GDP at current prices and real GDP is GDP at constant prices.
A rise in real GDP means more output, because prices are held at base-year levels.
The GDP deflator covers every good counted in GDP, unlike the fixed basket of the CPI.

Study next

Working out the GDP deflator and the inflation rate from nominal and real GDPGDP, GNP, NNP and national income at factor cost and at market pricesHow the CPI, the WPI and the GDP deflator differ as measures of inflation

Common traps

Taking the deflator for a growth measure because it is built out of GDP figures.
Missing that the stem asks for the pair that is NOT the same.

This is a NOT question dressed up as a matching exercise, so read the instruction line before you read the pairs. Macro vocabulary appears beside it here at GA Q.22, on the cause of a falling per capita income.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.