What It's All About: A Short Primer on GDP
“The success of gross national product and GDP is based on the fact that, with them, politicians were from the outset able to pursue a whole array of goals beyond just documenting economic processes.'” — Philipp Lepenies
This week, we are featuring two exciting new economics titles: Economic Thought: A Brief History, by Heinz Kurz, and The Power of a Single Number: A Political History of GDP, by Philipp Lepenies. Today, we have excerpted “What It’s All About: A Short Primer on GDP,” in which Lepenies quickly summarizes what exactly GDP (and GNP) are, and previews the ways that this “statistical construct became a matter of politics.”
