IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bea/wpaper/0052.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

GDP and Beyond: Measuring Economic Progress and Sustainability

Author

Listed:
  • J. Steven Landefeld
  • Shaunda M. Villones

    (Bureau of Economic Analysis)

Abstract

The United States possesses some of the most highly developed sets of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) accounts in the world. These accounts are collectively known as the National Income Product and Wealth Accounts or National Accounts. However, since their inception in the 1930s, the economy has continuously evolved. Issues have been raised about the scope and structure of the national accounts, limitations of focusing on market activities, and the contributions of investments in human capital and natural resources to economic growth. More recently, there are concerns about the adequacy of the national accounts in capturing the differential impact of the current recession, and the failure of the existing national accounts to provide adequate warning about the imbalances that developed in housing and financial markets. This article explores each of these issues and relates them to the need for expanded or supplementary measures for the national accounts, highlighting what such estimates might reveal relative to the conventional statistics presented by GDP and other aggregate statistics from the accounts.

Suggested Citation

  • J. Steven Landefeld & Shaunda M. Villones, 2009. "GDP and Beyond: Measuring Economic Progress and Sustainability," BEA Working Papers 0052, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
    • Handle: RePEc:bea:wpaper:0052
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bea.gov/system/files/papers/RevisedBeyondGDP.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Simon Kuznets & Lillian Epstein & Elizabeth Jenks, 1946. "National Income and Its Composition, 1919-1938, Volume II," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number kuzn41-3, June.
    2. J. Steven Landefeld & Stephanie H. McCulla, 2000. "Accounting For Nonmarket Household Production Within A National Accounts Framework," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 46(3), pages 289-307, September.
    3. Dale W. Jorgenson, 2009. "A New Architecture For The U.S. National Accounts," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(1), pages 1-42, March.
    4. Simon Kuznets, 1941. "National Income, 1919-1938," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number kuzn41-2, June.
    5. J. Steven Landefeld & Barbara M. Fraumeni & Cindy M. Vojtech, 2009. "Accounting For Household Production: A Prototype Satellite Account Using The American Time Use Survey," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(2), pages 205-225, June.
    6. Michael G. Palumbo & Jonathan A. Parker, 2009. "The Integrated Financial and Real System of National Accounts for the United States: Does It Presage the Financial Crisis?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 80-86, May.
    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. Olha Hlushchenko, 2016. "Well-being funding: essence and estimation method," RIVISTA DI STUDI SULLA SOSTENIBILITA', FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(2), pages 45-55.
    2. Carol E. Moylan, 2010. "Cyclical Indicators for the United States," BEA Papers 0099, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
    3. V. K. Shrotryia & Shashank Vikram Pratap Singh, 2020. "Measuring Progress Beyond GDP: A Theoretical Perspective," Emerging Economy Studies, International Management Institute, vol. 6(2), pages 143-165, November.
    4. Sun, Huaping & Kporsu, Anthony Kwaku & Taghizadeh-Hesary, Farhad & Edziah, Bless Kofi, 2020. "Estimating environmental efficiency and convergence: 1980 to 2016," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).

    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. D.P. Doessel & Ruth F.G. Williams, 2012. "The New Welfare Measures," Working Papers 2012.07, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
    2. Thomas Masterson & Ajit Zacharias & Selcuk Eren & Edward Wolff, 2011. "The Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being, France, 1989 and 2000," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_679, Levy Economics Institute.
    3. Bos, Frits, 2011. "Three centuries of macro-economic statistics," MPRA Paper 35391, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Aurélien Poissonnier & Delphine Roy, 2017. "Household Satellite Account for France," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63(2), pages 353-377, June.
    5. Robert J Barro, 2021. "Double Counting of Investment," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(638), pages 2333-2356.
    6. Ledenyov, Dimitri O. & Ledenyov, Viktor O., 2015. "Wave function method to forecast foreign currencies exchange rates at ultra high frequency electronic trading in foreign currencies exchange markets," MPRA Paper 67470, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Stanley L. Engerman, 1997. "The Standard of Living Debate in International Perspective: Measures and Indicators," NBER Chapters, in: Health and Welfare during Industrialization, pages 17-46, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Thomas Philippon, 2015. "Has the US Finance Industry Become Less Efficient? On the Theory and Measurement of Financial Intermediation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(4), pages 1408-1438, April.
    9. Carla Canelas & François Gardes & Philip Merrigan & Silvia Salazar, 2019. "Are time and money equally substitutable for all commodity groups in the household’s domestic production?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 267-285, March.
    10. Reicher, Christopher Phillip, 2009. "Expectations, monetary policy, and labor markets: lessons from the Great Depression," Kiel Working Papers 1543, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    11. Benjamin Bridgman & Andrew Craig & Danit Kanal, 2022. "Accounting for Household Production in the National Accounts," Survey of Current Business, Bureau of Economic Analysis, vol. 102(2), pages 1-3, February.
    12. Jorge Guzman & Scott Stern, 2016. "Nowcasting and Placecasting Entrepreneurial Quality and Performance," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring Entrepreneurial Businesses: Current Knowledge and Challenges, pages 63-109, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Gerben Bakker & Nicholas Crafts & Pieter Woltjer, 2019. "The Sources of Growth in a Technologically Progressive Economy: The United States, 1899–1941," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(622), pages 2267-2294.
    14. Richard H. Steckel & Roderick Floud, 1997. "Introduction to "Health and Welfare during Industrialization"," NBER Chapters, in: Health and Welfare during Industrialization, pages 1-16, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Fabien Tripier, 2009. "Elasticity of factor substitution and the rise in labor's share of income during the Great Depression," Working Papers hal-00419343, HAL.
    16. Carol A. Corrado & Charles R. Hulten, 2014. "Financial Intermediation in the National Accounts: Asset Valuation, Intermediation, and Tobin′s q," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring Wealth and Financial Intermediation and Their Links to the Real Economy, pages 125-147, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Benk, Szilárd & Gillman, Max & Kejak, Michal, 2010. "A banking explanation of the US velocity of money: 1919-2004," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 765-779, April.
    18. Edward N. Wolff & Ajit Zacharias, 2003. "The Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_372, Levy Economics Institute.
    19. Daniel Sichel & Eric von Hippel, 2021. "Household Innovation and R&D: Bigger than You Think," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 67(3), pages 639-658, September.
    20. Raluca-Maria Bala, 2014. "A Proposal for Assessing the Economic Welfare Of Romania," Romanian Statistical Review, Romanian Statistical Review, vol. 62(3), pages 11-30, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook

    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:bea:wpaper:0052. 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: Andrea Batch (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/beagvus.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.