IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/iza/izawol/journl2017n368.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gross domestic product: Are other measures needed?

Author

Listed:
  • Barbara M. Fraumeni

    (Hunan University, China, NBER, USA, and IZA, Germany)

Abstract

Gross domestic product (GDP) is the key indicator of the health of an economy and can be easily compared across countries. But it has limitations. GDP tells what is going on today, but does not inform about sustainability of growth. It does not measure happiness, so residents can be dissatisfied even when GDP is rising. GDP does not consider environmental factors or reflect what individuals do outside paid employment. It might increase in times of military conflicts and after natural disasters or terrorist acts, as the loss of property is not counted. Hence, complementary measures may help to show a more comprehensive picture of an economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Barbara M. Fraumeni, 2017. "Gross domestic product: Are other measures needed?," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 368-368, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izawol:journl:2017:n:368
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/368/pdfs/gross-domestic-product-are-other-measures-needed.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://wol.iza.org/articles/gross-domestic-product-are-other-measures-needed
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. World Bank, 2020. "Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 34496.
    2. Diane Coyle, 2014. "GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10183.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sochi Iwuoha & Joseph I. Onochie, 2022. "Time Series Characteristics of Canada’s Beyond GDP Indicators," Advances in Management and Applied Economics, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 12(5), pages 1-6.
    2. Justyna Cader & Renata Koneczna & Piotr Olczak, 2021. "The Impact of Economic, Energy, and Environmental Factors on the Development of the Hydrogen Economy," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-22, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Elert, Niklas & Henrekson, Magnus, 2017. "Entrepreneurship and Institutions: A Bidirectional Relationship," Working Paper Series 1153, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 05 May 2017.
    2. Haddad, Eduardo & Araújo, Inácio, 2022. "Regional Science Meets the Past: What Do Coin Finds Tell Us About the Ancient Spatial Economy?," TD NEREUS 2-2022, Núcleo de Economia Regional e Urbana da Universidade de São Paulo (NEREUS).
    3. Ratzanyel Rincón, 2023. "Quarterly multidimensional poverty estimates in Mexico using machine learning algorithms/Estimaciones trimestrales de pobreza multidimensional en México mediante algoritmos de aprendizaje de máquina," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 38(1), pages 3-68.
    4. Sèna Kimm Gnangnon, 2024. "Export product quality and inclusivity in developing countries," Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(3), pages 807-843, July.
    5. Hoff, Jens V. & Rasmussen, Martin M.B. & Sørensen, Peter Birch, 2021. "Barriers and opportunities in developing and implementing a Green GDP," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    6. Nicholas Oulton, 2018. "GDP and the System of National Accounts: Past, Present and Future," Discussion Papers 1802, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM), revised Jun 2018.
    7. Shuanglei Zhou & Shaojun Chen, 2023. "The Impact of the Anti-Poverty Relocation and Settlement Program on Farmers’ Livelihood: Perspective of Livelihood Space," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-15, May.
    8. Ifrim, Mihaela & Lazorec, Maria & Pintilescu, Carmen, 2022. "Assessing the economic resilience in central and eastern EU countries. A multidimensional approach," MPRA Paper 117912, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Richard Higgott & Simon Reich, 2022. "The age of fuzzy bifurcation: Lessons from the pandemic and the Ukraine War," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 13(5), pages 627-639, November.
    10. O'Donovan, Nick, 2024. "Turning less into more: Measuring real GDP growth in the green transition," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 224(C).
    11. Büttner, Nicolas & Grimm, Michael & Günther, Isabel & Harttgen, Kenneth & Klasen, Stephan, 2022. "The fertility transition in Sub-Saharan Africa: The role of structural change," Passauer Diskussionspapiere, Volkswirtschaftliche Reihe V-90-22, University of Passau, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    12. Clemens Hetschko & Louisa von Reumont & Ronnie Schöb, 2019. "Embedding as a pitfall for survey‐based welfare indicators: evidence from an experiment," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 182(2), pages 517-539, February.
    13. Elert, Niklas & Stenkula, Mikael, 2020. "Intrapreneurship: Productive, Unproductive, and Destructive," Working Paper Series 1367, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    14. Sèna Kimm Gnangnon, 2023. "Do unilateral trade preferences help reduce poverty in beneficiary countries?," International Journal of Economic Policy Studies, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 249-288, February.
    15. von Reumont, Louisa & Schöb, Ronnie & Hetschko, Clemens, 2017. "Embedding Effects in the OECD Better Life Index," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168133, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    16. Cameron Hepburn & Eric Beinhocker & J. Doyne Farmer & Alexander Teytelboym, 2014. "Resilient and Inclusive Prosperity within Planetary Boundaries," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 22(5), pages 76-92, September.
    17. Mokyr, Joel, 2018. "The past and the future of innovation: Some lessons from economic history," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 13-26.
    18. Pushp, Pushkar & Ahmed, Faisal, 2023. "The global value chain: Challenges faced by ASEAN least developed countries," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 45(6), pages 1223-1245.
    19. Diane Coyle & Leonard Nakamura, 2019. "Towards a Framework for Time Use, Welfare and Household-centric Economic Measurement," Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Discussion Papers ESCoE DP-2019-01, Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE).
    20. Narayan,Ambar & Cojocaru,Alexandru & Agrawal,Sarthak & Bundervoet,Tom & Davalos,Maria Eugenia & Garcia,Natalia & Lakner,Christoph & Mahler,Daniel Gerszon & Montalva Talledo,Veronica Sonia & Ten,Andrey, 2022. "COVID-19 and Economic Inequality : Short-Term Impacts with Long-Term Consequences," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9902, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    GDP; macroeconomic measures; national income accounting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B4 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izawol:journl:2017:n:368. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.