Graham, Carol, (2016), “GDP growth — is it “good enough” or does it distort policymaking?”, Brookings, 5 Οctober
Today, standard benchmarks of progress, productivity, job quality, and democracy are being upended. Income-based measures such as gross domestic product (GDP) served us well for decades, yet when GDP counts pollutant-generating economic activity on the positive side of the balance sheet, or when it fails to measure unpaid labor activity, it falls short. This is especially worrying given that we live in a world wracked by social inequities. As David Rothkopf pointed out in The New York Times in 2011, the early authors of these metrics, including economist Simon Kuznets, warned about these shortcomings, cautioning that a nation’s welfare cannot be “inferred from (such) a measurement of national income.” Regardless, GDP became the established marker of macroeconomic success worldwide.
Relevant Posts
- Felice, Giulia, (2016), “Size and composition of public investment, sectoral composition and growth”, European Journal of Political Economy, September
- Spence, Michael, (2016), “Growth in a Time of Disruption”, Project Syndicate, 27 July