Professor Philip Lane:

For any fiscal dimension, any form of expenditure or revenue, certain deficits will look worse scaling by GNI* relative to GDP, because it is a smaller number. The numbers for expenditure relative to GNI* and revenue relative to GNI* will look higher. It will alter the way we think about it. In the world as is, we have autonomy over fiscal decisions. It is up to the political system and wider society to decide how much they are going to take on board the message that the underlying level of income in the economy is more accurately recorded by GNI* rather than GDP. If we do not want to fool ourselves, we should be accepting that.