It’s sometimes hard to remember that economics is a young discipline, especially when it’s compared to other areas of study such as philosophy and mathematics. Economics really only got going when Scottish philosopher Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776. It’s still a classic.
From then until the first half of the twentieth century there remained no accepted measure of economic output that could easily compare the wealth that different countries were producing with even a modicum of accuracy.
Then came Gross Domestic Product or GDP. That was the invention that Ehsan Masood refers to in his book The Great Invention which is scheduled to be published this month. Indeed, it was a great invention, but as Masood points out in some detail, it wasn’t perfect and also it remains imperfect.
Read more here.
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