Chapter 22 — Further Reading

On GDP

Diane Coyle, GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History, Princeton University Press, 2014 The best single book on what GDP is, where it came from, and why it matters. Coyle, an economist and former UK statistical official, is honest about GDP's strengths and limits. Short (about 160 pages) and accessible.

Zachary Karabell, The Leading Indicators: A Short History of the Numbers That Rule Our World, Simon & Schuster, 2014 A broader history of economic indicators, including GDP, unemployment, and inflation. Useful for understanding how these numbers were invented and how they've shaped policy.

Bureau of Economic Analysis, An Introduction to the National Income and Product Accounts (bea.gov) The official BEA guide to how GDP is calculated. Free online and clearly written.

On the limits of GDP

Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn't Add Up, New Press, 2010 A report by a commission of Nobel laureates (convened by French President Sarkozy) arguing that GDP is an inadequate measure of economic performance and social progress. Short and influential.

Robert Kennedy, "Remarks at the University of Kansas" (March 18, 1968) Kennedy's famous speech on what GDP measures and doesn't: "It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile." Worth reading in full — available in many anthologies and online.

Erik Brynjolfsson and Avinash Collis, "How Should We Measure the Digital Economy?" Harvard Business Review, 2019 On the challenge of measuring the value of free digital goods (Google, Facebook, Wikipedia) that GDP doesn't count.

On the GPI (case study 2)

Ida Kubiszewski et al., "Beyond GDP: Measuring and Achieving Global Genuine Progress," Ecological Economics, 2013 A comprehensive cross-country comparison of GPI vs. GDP. The paper finds that global GPI per capita peaked around 1978 and has been roughly flat since — while GDP per capita has continued to rise.

Clifford Cobb, Ted Halstead, and Jonathan Rowe, "If the GDP Is Up, Why Is America Down?" The Atlantic, October 1995 The article that introduced the GPI concept to a broad audience. Readable and provocative.

On alternative measures of wellbeing

United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, annual The source for the Human Development Index (HDI) and related indicators. Free online at hdr.undp.org.

Richard Easterlin, "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence," 1974 The original paper on the "Easterlin paradox" — the finding that above a moderate income, more GDP doesn't make people much happier. One of the most-cited papers in happiness economics.

John Helliwell, Richard Layard, and Jeffrey Sachs (eds.), World Happiness Report, annual The annual UN-sponsored report on subjective wellbeing across countries. Uses life-satisfaction data from Gallup. Free online.

Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, Anchor Books, 1999 Sen argues that human wellbeing should be measured by capabilities (what people can do and be), not by income or GDP. The foundational text for the capabilities approach.

On COVID and GDP (case study 1)

Bureau of Economic Analysis, GDP releases Q1–Q4 2020 and Q1–Q2 2021 (bea.gov) The official data. Free online.

Raj Chetty et al., Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker (tracktherecovery.org) Real-time data on the economic impact of COVID, broken down by income, sector, and geography. The most detailed evidence for the K-shaped recovery.

Jason Furman and Wilson Powell III, "The U.S. Economy During and After COVID-19," Brookings Institution, multiple papers Careful analyses of the GDP data, the fiscal response, and the recovery. Accessible and well-sourced.

On GDP measurement and history

Simon Kuznets, "National Income, 1929–1935," Senate document, 1934 The original report by the economist who invented modern GDP measurement. Kuznets himself warned that GDP is not a measure of welfare: "The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income." Worth reading the introduction.

Angus Maddison, Contours of the World Economy, 1–2030 AD, Oxford University Press, 2007 Historical GDP estimates for every country going back centuries (and in some cases, millennia). Maddison's data is the foundation of most long-run growth analysis.

A reading order recommendation

If you have time for one of the sources above, read Coyle's GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History. It's the best single book on the topic.

If you want the philosophical critique, read Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi's Mismeasuring Our Lives or Sen's Development as Freedom.

If you want the GPI story, read Kubiszewski et al. (2013).

Chapter 23 — The Cost of Living: Inflation, CPI, and Why Your Grandparents' Prices Were Lower — is next.