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Analysis Of GDP : A Brief And Affectionate History

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Yuxuan Gao Prof. Ditzer Econ 393 Nov.29th, 2017 Reading report on the “GDP: a brief but affectionate history” This book mainly talks about how GDP was in the early time. What is the purpose of the collecting the data of the wealth of the country. What is the composition of the country’s wealthy. How does the composition of GDP change? Who are the people contribute the most in history about GDP. What are the economic problems of each era and what are the solutions had done and what are the policies should have done. Dr. Coyle shows that the need for national accounting in the US and Britain in the 17th century was the prime catalyst for creating the GDP measure. This need in itself was felt because it was thought that such …show more content…

It has also been estimated that Google searches alone contribute 150 billion dollars each year, but this is not included in the GDP. We can see those numbers in the formula changes contrary to what we actually feel about our well-beings. So, it is easy to find shortcomings with this measure in a 21st century economy. Fortunately, the author proposes some measures to bridge these problems. Dr. Coyle says that GDP is a measure that reflects mass production well but is not well suited to deal with an economy which is mostly dominated by a large number of varied services. But we should not abandon it in a rush. She suggests that we study three issues in order to move towards a better measure. She calls them Complexity, Productivity and Sustainability. Complexity is reflected in innovation, pace of introduction of new products and services, global production chains and also in the financial sector. Quantifying the value of driverless cars and individually customized products like medicines and computers are some examples. In a global production chain, how do we account for which component is produced where? A special conundrum comes from the soaring financial sector, which makes money without actually producing anything. Accounting for that has evolved from "Alice and Wonderland" to "statistical mirages" that warp the GDPs of many

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