In my post on China and the United States earlier today, I was careful to say that, by most measures, the United States still has by far the largest economy in the world. The International Monetary Fund, for instance, estimates gross domestic product in the United States to have been about $14.6 trillion last year, while China’s was $10.1 trillion. The World Bank estimates a similar gap.

But at least one economist disagrees. Arvind Subramanian of the Peterson Institute for International Economics argues that these estimates do not adequately take into account cheaper living standards in China. Once he controls for the fact that similar items are much cheaper in China — even cheaper, he says, than most economists have understood — he finds that China produced more goods and services than the United States did last year. Mr. Subramanian puts China’s gross domestic product at $14.8 trillion.

He remains very much in the minority. And even his numbers mean that the living standards of the typical person in the United States remain vastly higher than Chinese living standards. (China, of course, has many more people.) It will be interesting to watch if he has any luck persuading other economists.