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The political economy of development
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Gross Domestic Product   Editor: Dr. Róbinson Rojas Sandford
Gross Domestic Product
A short definition

Tim Callan (from the IMF)
What is Gross Domestic Product?
"GDP measures the monetary value of final goods and services—that is, those that are bought by the final user—produced in a country in a given period of time (say a quarter or a year). It counts all the output generated within the borders of a country. GDP is composed of goods and services produced for sale in the market and also includes some nonmarket production, such as defense or education services provided by the government. An alternative concept, gross national product, or GNP, counts all the output of the residents of a country. So if a German-owned company has a factory in the United States, the output of this factory would be included in U.S. GDP, but in German GNP..."

From the OECD
The conceptual framework underlying the national accounts
"The national accounts are designed to provide a coherent and consistent set of data for various types of economic analysis. The major summary aggregate, GDP, provides an estimate of the overall unduplicated production in a country’s economy. It is an important statistic because, in the longer term, the level of a country’s production broadly determines the amount of goods and services which can be consumed by the country’s inhabitants. However, while being an important indicator of a country’s economic well-being, GDP is not necessarily a reliable indicator of a country’s overall community welfare or quality of life. A number of other, non-economic, indicators such as public health, education levels, crime rates and environmental quality would have to be taken into account in any such measure..."

Róbinson Rojas

Measuring National Income. The problems. Definitions
(from Macmillan Dictionary of Modern Economics, Macmillan, 1986):
"National Income: a measure of the money value of the goods and services becoming available to the nation from economic activity. "There are three approaches to measuring this:
1.-as the sum of the incomes derived from economic activity, these broadly divide into incomes from PROFITS and incomes from employment;
2.-as the sum of expenditures, with the main distinction being between expenditure on CONSUMPTION and expenditures which add to the CAPITAL STOCK (INVESTMENT);
3.-as the sum of the products of the various industries of the nation."


U.S. Department of Commerce:
Bureau of Economic Analysis
National and international accounts

Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress

The Commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress has been created at the beginning of 2008 on French government's initiative.
The output of the Commission will be made public, providing a template for every interested country or group of countries.
The Commission is chaired by Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz, Columbia University. Professor Amartya Sen, Harvard University, is Chair Adviser. Professor Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, President of the Observatoire Français des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE), is Coordinator of the Commission. Members of the Commission are renowned experts from universities, governmental and intergovernmental organisations, in several countries (USA, France, United Kingdom, India). Rapporteurs and secretariat are provided by the French national statistical institute (Insee), OFCE, and OECD.
The Commission held its first plenary meeting on 22 - 23 April 2008 in Paris. It is expected to give in its final report after one year.

Download the final report of the commission ( 16 Sep. 2009)

In February 2008, the President of the French Republic, Nicholas Sarkozy, unsatisfied with the present state of statistical information about the economy and the society, asked, Joseph Stiglitz (President of the Commission), Amartya Sen (Advisor) and Jean Paul Fitoussi (Coordinator) to create a Commission, subsequently called “The Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress” (CMEPSP). The Commission’s aim has been to identify the limits of GDP as an indicator of economic performance and social progress, including the problems with its measurement; to consider what additional information might be required for the production of more relevant indicators of social progress; to assess the feasibility of alternative measurement tools, and to discuss how to present the statistical information in an appropriate way.


Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, in charge of the commission, have considered it useful to leave their personal reflections. It draws extensively on the work of the commission. This is the purpose of the document :
The Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress Revisited - Reflections and Overview,
September, 16, 2009

View videos of September 14, 2009 meeting:
Presentation of the final report from the Commission on the Measurement Of Economic Performance and Social Progress by Joseph E. Stiglitz, chairman of the Commission

Christine Lagarde's speech

Working Papers and Reports

 


Economic Growth Resources
(University of Bristol)

Penn World Data Tables
(University of Pennsylvania)
The Penn World Table provides purchasing power parity and national income accounts converted to international prices for 188 countries for some or all of the years 1950-2004. The European Union or the OECD provide more detailed purchasing power and real product estimates for their countries and the World Bank makes current price estimates for most PWT countries at the GDP level.

International Comparison Program
(The World Bank Group)
ICP Regional Results:
December 2007: Final results of the International Comparison Program for Asia.
June 2007: Final results of the International Comparison Program for South America.
March 2007: First Results of the International Comparison Program for Africa.

Country Reports on Economic Policy and Trade
(U.S. Government)

Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean
(IADB)

Research and Data
(IADB)

Development Indicators
(OECD)

Tables presented hereby are extracted from OECD.stat, the official online plateform to disseminate OECD statistics.
Additional data can be found in OECD.stat: historical time series starting in 1955, zones, additional countries and other statistical measures.


Statistics Portal
(OECD)

Central Banks on the WWW
(Bank for International Settlements)

Statistical Resources
(University of Michigan)

CIA World Factbook
(U.S. Government)


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
--World Development Indicators
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---(the complete series)

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---(the complete series)

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Education for Sustainability
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