Beyond GDP

The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters
by Diane Coyle
Published 15 Apr 2025

See also “­free” digital ­services GDP (gross domestic product): alternative indices to, 242–44; analy­sis of growth and, 26; effect of cloud computing on, 89; ­house­hold production and, 67, 68, 106–7; imputation for barter and, 132; imputation in UK statistics, 17–18, 18; life satisfaction correlated with growth in, 237; ­measuring effect of technological pro­gress on, 2; production counted in, 105–6; profits from global production and, 158, 160; real, 179; real-­terms, 48; redefinition of, 16–17; share of major sectors expressed as percentage of, 14, 14–15 GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History (Coyle), 13 GDP-­B (Beyond GDP), digital ­services and, 136, 137, 138. See also Beyond GDP movement generalized exactly additive decomposition, 49–50 General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Keynes), 24 generative artificial intelligence (AI): data-­driven decision-­making and, 29; economic progress/economic change and, 2, 4; impact on occupations, 165; productivity growth and, 40–41 Genuine Pro­gress Indicator, 244 gig employment, 20, 105, 116–20 GlaxoSmithKline, 79–80 globalisation, 154–56 global material footprint, 205, 206 global value chains (GVCs) (global production networks (GPNs)), 74, 157–62 globotics, 164–65 GM cars, subscription ­services and, 94 i n de x goods: accounting methods for new, 188–90; counted in GDP, 106; prices and hours for selected, 194, 194–95; welfare benefits of new, 193 Google, 87, 95, 96, 112, 146, 164, 167 Google cloud computing ­services, 89, 92 government: digital initiatives, 172–75; ­measuring economic activity and, 22–27; need for good statistics to function, 240–41; resource allocation and, 60 grocery shopping, changes in experience of, 99–101 Gross National Happiness Index (Bhutan), 233 growth, sustainability and ethics of, 219–21.

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For instance, it is widely appreciated that the current framework omits many valuable activities, such as unpaid care, as well as ­failing to sufficiently m ­ easure innovations that transform quality of life, 16 Ch a p t er On e such as new medicines. Importantly, it fails to rec­ord environmental damage and externalities. It has therefore long had its critics, and the criticisms have grown in volume and salience over time. What has become known as the Beyond GDP movement has real momentum and is starting to be reflected in official statistics. The official statistical definitions are determined through a United Nations (UN) p­ rocess involving expert statisticians (mainly from the rich countries) and are updated ­every ten to twenty years. The last set of revisions was released in 2008, SNA08, and the next is due to be published in 2025.

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The last set of revisions was released in 2008, SNA08, and the next is due to be published in 2025. SNA25 ­will incorporate UN definitions already released for m ­ easuring aspects of the ­environment previously overlooked in economic statistics—­known by the acronym SEEA, the System of Environmental-­Economic Accounting. The Beyond GDP debate largely focuses on the omission of nature from official statistics, although without natu­ral resources ­there would be no economy and no life. SNA25 ­will include modest improvements in other statistics, such as ­those tackling aspects of the digital economy and ­those addressing the omission of unpaid h­ ouse­hold and voluntary activities, from GDP.

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet
by Klaus Schwab
Published 7 Jan 2021

The Nobel Prize, “Simon Kuznets Biographical,” 1971, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1971/kuznets/biographical/. 4 “GDP: A brief history,” Elizabeth Dickinson, Foreign Policy, January 2011, https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/01/03/gdp-a-brief-history/. 5 Ibidem. 6 “Beyond GDP: Economists Search for New Definition of Well-Being,” Der Spiegel, September 2009, https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/beyond-gdp-economists-search-for-new-definition-of-well-being-a-650532.html. 7 Phone interview with Diane Coyle by Peter Vanham, August 18, 2019. 8 Measured in constant 2010 US dollars. 9 World Bank, GDP Growth (annual %), 1961–2018, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG. 10 “What's a Global Recession,” Bob Davis, The Wall Street Journal, April 2009, https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/04/22/whats-a-global-recession/. 11 United States Census Bureau, International Data Base, September 2018, https://www.census.gov/data-tools/demo/idb/informationGateway.php. 12 “World Economic Outlook,” International Monetary Fund, Updated July 2019, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2019/07/18/WEOupdateJuly2019. 13 “World Economic Outlook,” International Monetary Fund, April 2019, Appendix A https://www.imf.org/~/media/Files/Publications/WEO/2019/April/English/text.ashx?

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Lacking this kind of super boost, the great convergence of economic standards of living between North and South, as predicted by some economists, will materialize very slowly, if at all. As Robin Brooks, chief economist at the Institute of International Finance (IIF) told James Wheatley of the Financial Times in 2019: “More and more, there is a discussion that the growth story for emerging markets is just over. There is no growth premium to be had any more.”16 Looking beyond GDP does not provide more promising prospects. Other economic metrics, notably debt and productivity, are also pointing in the wrong direction. Rising Debt Consider first rising debt. Global debt—including public, corporate, and household debt—by mid-2020 stood at some $258 trillion globally, according to the Institute of International Finance,17 or more than three times global GDP.

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There is only so much value to getting the key stakeholders to talk to each other and take each other's objectives into account, when they themselves are not representative of the groups of people they are meant to represent. 24 History is filled with examples of heads of governments, companies, and religious organizations bonding together for their mutual benefit. But almost without fault, society as a whole or important groups of minority stakeholders have suffered when they were not properly accounted for in those alliances. We will look in more detail on how to get this right in the coming chapters. Going Beyond GDP and Profits Once all stakeholders have a seat at the table, corporations, organizations, and governments must move away from the fetishization of profits or related metrics, such as gross domestic product (GDP). The single-minded pursuit of profit should be replaced with more holistic measures of value creation.

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet
by Klaus Schwab and Peter Vanham
Published 27 Jan 2021

The Nobel Prize, “Simon Kuznets Biographical,” 1971, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1971/kuznets/biographical/. 4 “GDP: A brief history,” Elizabeth Dickinson, Foreign Policy, January 2011, https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/01/03/gdp-a-brief-history/. 5 Ibidem. 6 “Beyond GDP: Economists Search for New Definition of Well-Being,” Der Spiegel, September 2009, https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/beyond-gdp-economists-search-for-new-definition-of-well-being-a-650532.html. 7 Phone interview with Diane Coyle by Peter Vanham, August 18, 2019. 8 Measured in constant 2010 US dollars. 9 World Bank, GDP Growth (annual %), 1961–2018, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG. 10 “What's a Global Recession,” Bob Davis, The Wall Street Journal, April 2009, https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/04/22/whats-a-global-recession/. 11 United States Census Bureau, International Data Base, September 2018, https://www.census.gov/data-tools/demo/idb/informationGateway.php. 12 “World Economic Outlook,” International Monetary Fund, Updated July 2019, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2019/07/18/WEOupdateJuly2019. 13 “World Economic Outlook,” International Monetary Fund, April 2019, Appendix A https://www.imf.org/~/media/Files/Publications/WEO/2019/April/English/text.ashx?

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Lacking this kind of super boost, the great convergence of economic standards of living between North and South, as predicted by some economists, will materialize very slowly, if at all. As Robin Brooks, chief economist at the Institute of International Finance (IIF) told James Wheatley of the Financial Times in 2019: “More and more, there is a discussion that the growth story for emerging markets is just over. There is no growth premium to be had any more.”16 Looking beyond GDP does not provide more promising prospects. Other economic metrics, notably debt and productivity, are also pointing in the wrong direction. Rising Debt Consider first rising debt. Global debt—including public, corporate, and household debt—by mid-2020 stood at some $258 trillion globally, according to the Institute of International Finance,17 or more than three times global GDP.

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There is only so much value to getting the key stakeholders to talk to each other and take each other's objectives into account, when they themselves are not representative of the groups of people they are meant to represent. 24 History is filled with examples of heads of governments, companies, and religious organizations bonding together for their mutual benefit. But almost without fault, society as a whole or important groups of minority stakeholders have suffered when they were not properly accounted for in those alliances. We will look in more detail on how to get this right in the coming chapters. Going Beyond GDP and Profits Once all stakeholders have a seat at the table, corporations, organizations, and governments must move away from the fetishization of profits or related metrics, such as gross domestic product (GDP). The single-minded pursuit of profit should be replaced with more holistic measures of value creation.

Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be
by Diane Coyle
Published 11 Oct 2021

Enterprise Act 2002, Section 58 and Intervention Order under Section 42 of the Act, October 2008, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/40/part/3/chapter/2/. Epstein, Joshua M., 2007, Generative Social Science Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. European Commission, Beyond GDP, http://ec.europa.eu/environment/beyond_gdp/index_en.html. Evans, David S., and Richard Schmalensee, 2016a, Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Evans, David S., and Richard Schmalensee , 2016b, ‘The New Economics of Multi-Sided Platforms: A Guide to the Vocabulary (9 June), SSRN, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2793021 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2793021.

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More specifically relevant to welfare economics, the capabilities approach to welfare has gained policy traction, both in the context of development economics (Dasgupta 2007; Sen 2017; 1970) and in the wider debate about how to assess economic progress (Fitoussi, Sen, and Stiglitz 2009). There has been a recent surge of interest in the worlds of policy-making and campaigning, including in official bodies such as the European Commission and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in measures that go ‘beyond GDP’, or in other words beyond market outcomes. Yet the technocratic instinct and the legacy of free market politics since the 1980s leave much economic policy analysis stranded in a narrower approach than is reflected in this recent thinking. Economic policy-makers who were students in earlier decades have firmly internalised the free market framing.

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The 2009 Sen-Stiglitz-Fitoussi Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance recommended moving away from a single indicator (GDP) to a dashboard; the report did not specific its components, but the Commission ignited significant work in the statistics and policy community to think about life ‘Beyond GDP’. A number of countries now have measurement and reporting of well-being, environmental accounts, or broader well-being frameworks. However, these vary substantially, and there is no solid theoretical structure commanding wide consensus, so they are used less than one might have hoped. (Note also that dashboards imply drivers, a metaphor still embedding the top-down, outside the model, perspective.)

Growth: A Reckoning
by Daniel Susskind
Published 16 Apr 2024

Regarding the latter examples, as one survey of the measure notes, ‘when rising crime, pollution, catastrophes, or health hazards trigger defensive or repair expenditures’, Marc Fleurbaey, ‘Beyond GDP: The Quest for a Measure of Social Welfare’, Journal of Economic Literature, 47:4 (2009), 1029–75. 35 Daniel Indiviglio, ‘Really, the Oil Spill Isn’t Good for the Economy’, The Atlantic, 15 June 2010. 36 Ron Bousso, ‘BP Deepwater Horizon Costs Balloon to $65 Billion’, Reuters, 16 January 2018: www.reuters.com/article/us-bp-deepwaterhorizon-idUSKBN1F50NL. 37 Fleurbaey, ‘Beyond GDP’ ‘convivial reciprocity’ is replaced by ‘anonymous market relations’. 38 Nicholas Oulton, ‘Hooray for GDP!’

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(London: Allen Lane, 2020). 45 Feldstein, ‘Underestimating’, p. 145. 46 Thomas Blanchet, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, ‘Real-Time Inequality’, NBER Working Paper No. 30229 (2022); Dennis Fixler, Marina Gindelsky and David Johnson, ‘Measuring Inequality in the National Accounts’, BEA Working Paper Series WP2020–3, December 2020. 47 For pressure, see the discussion of the SNA review here: Paul Allin, Diane Coyle and Tim Jackson, ‘Beyond GDP: Changing How We Measure Progress is Key to Tackling a World in Crisis – Three Leading Experts’, The Conversation, 18 August 2022. For resistance, see page 13 of SNA, System of National Accounts 2008 (New York, 2009). 48 Gilbert, quoted in Moshe Syrquin, ‘A Review Essay on GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History by Diane Coyle’, Journal of Economic Literature, 54:2 (2016), 573–88. 49 John Maynard Keynes and Erwin Rothbarth, ‘The Income and Fiscal Potential of Great Britain’, Economic Journal, 49:196 (1939).

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See also Benjamin Hav Mitra-Kahn, ‘Redefining the Economy: How the Economy Was Invented in 1620, and Has Been Redefined Ever Since’, thesis submitted for a PhD in Economics, City University London (2016), p. 213. 50 web.stanford.edu/~johntayl/2000_pdfs/Monetary_Policy_Theory_in_Practice_Mervyn_King_Jan-2000.pdf. 51 Jeremy Warner, ‘Outlook: King Not Yet a Gloomster, but He’d Much Prefer to be Boring’, The Independent, 13 February 2003, www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/outlook-king-not-yet-a-gloomster-but-he-d-much-prefer-to-be-boring-118819.html. 52 Coyle, GDP makes a similar point on the arbitrary nature of these weights. Charles Jones and Peter Klenow, ‘Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time’, American Economic Review, 106:9 (2016), 2426–57, assign the weights according to actual preferences (though we might ask if those ought to be the weights or if some other weights are a better measure of their welfare). But they also, as they note, include an arbitrary set of measures in their utility functions as well. 53 David Pilling, The Growth Delusion (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), p. 275 lead me to www.econlib.org/archives/2009/05/against_the_hum.html. 54 Anna Alexandrova, ‘Why Public Policy Shouldn’t be Guided by Master Numbers’, published online at Bennett Institute for Public Policy, June 2022, https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/beyond-master-numbers/. 55 Isaiah Berlin, ‘The First and the Last’, The New York Review of Books, 14 May 1998. 56 Andrew Yarrow, Measuring America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), p. 171. 57 Amartya Sen, On Ethics and Economics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), pp. 2–7. 58 Anthony Atkinson, ‘The Restoration of Welfare Economics’, American Economic Review, 101:3 (2011), 157–61, at p. 157. 59 Here, I have in mind Ruth Chang’s conception of incommensurability: ‘Two items are commensurable with respect to some value just in case they can be measured by some common scale of units of that value.

Economic Dignity
by Gene Sperling
Published 14 Sep 2020

But what remains true is that indicators that are better snapshots of well-being have the power to inform the entire policy dialogue of how people’s lives are truly faring and support a paradigm shift that prioritizes well-being over just growth. See Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, and Martine Durand, “Country-Experiences with Using Well-Being Indicators to Steer Policies,” in Beyond GDP: Measuring What Counts for Economic and Social Performance (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2018), 103–14, https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/beyond-gdp/country-experiences-with-using-well-being-indicators-to-steer-policies_9789264307292-7-en. 12. There are efforts to design more comprehensive indexes like the United Nations’ Human Development Index, the World Economic Forum’s twelve-factor Inclusive Development Index, and the sixteen critical factors comprising the Institute for Innovation in Social Policy’s Index of Social Health, including teenage suicide and food insecurity. 13.

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How well markets and economic policy lift up what matters most in people’s lives is not a second-order issue. It is the whole ball game, the only legitimate end goal of economic policy. BUT WHAT ABOUT BETTER ECONOMIC METRICS? For many years, I bought into the notion that the way to get beyond GDP as the end goal of the economic policy world was simply to push our focus toward other economic metrics that were better proxies for shared growth and shared prosperity. Measures like the Gini coefficient, median income, unemployment rates, and job growth paint a more accurate picture of whether a rising tide is in fact lifting all boats than examining GDP or the value of the stock market.

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See Indivar Dutta-Gupta, “New Poverty Measure Shows Government’s Anti-Poverty Impact,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, November 9, 2011, https://www.cbpp.org/blog/new-poverty-measure-shows-governments-anti-poverty-impact. 11. Stiglitz, Fitoussi, and the OECD have continued with their book Beyond GDP: Measuring What Counts for Economic and Social Performance. Their recent report highlights steps taken by ten countries to better incorporate measures of well-being and sustainable development into the policymaking process, though there is little consistency in the type of indicators the countries use and how they are incorporated into policy.

Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow
by Tim Jackson
Published 8 Dec 2016

See also Wilkinson (2005). 33 Oxfam (2014, 2015). 34 Meyer (2004). 35 See, for instance, Lord (2003), RSA (2015). 36 A recent leader in The Economist magazine argued that it’s time to ditch the GDP as a measure of prosperity; online at www.economist.com/news/leaders/21697834-gdp-bad-gauge-material-well-being-time-fresh-approach-how-measure-prosperity?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/howtomeasureprosperity (accessed 14 May 2016). Further examples of critiques of the GDP include the OECD’s Beyond GDP initiative, http://ec.europa.eu/environment/beyond_gdp/index_en.html (accessed 30 March 2016); and the report from the Sen-Stiglitz Commission (Stiglitz et al. 2009). 37 See the discussion on this point in Chapter 8. See also Benes and Kumhof (2012), Jackson and Dyson (2013). Versions of the sovereign money proposal are currently being debated in several advanced economies including Switzerland and Iceland. 11 A lasting prosperity 1 This line was part of an Apple advertising campaign entitled Think Differently launched in 1998.

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‘Could fighting global warming be cheap and free?’ New York Times, 18 September. Online at www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/opinion/paul-krugman-could-fighting-global-warming-be-cheap-and-free.html?_r=1 (accessed 31 December 2015). Kubiszewski, Ida, Robert Costanza, Carla Franco, Philip Lawn, John Talberth, Tim Jackson et al. 2013. ‘Beyond GDP: Measuring and achieving global genuine progress’. Ecological Economics 93: 57–68. Lakoff, George 2012. ‘All in the mind’. Progress Magazine. Online at www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/09/12/all-in-the-mind-2/ (accessed 15 March 2016). Lancaster, Kelvin 1966. ‘A new approach to consumer theory’.

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World
by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott
Published 9 May 2016

Still they will be able to answer questions regarding that data by asking those questions of the encrypted data itself using homomorphic encryption techniques. 26. Leading thinkers have a broad view of prosperity that goes beyond GDP growth. Harvard’s Michael Porter has created a social progress imperative http://www.socialprogressimperative.org. Economist Joseph Stiglitz and others have researched measures beyond GDP—http://www.insee.fr/fr/publications-et-services/dossiers_web/stiglitz/doc-commission/RAPPORT_anglais.pdf. There are other efforts that try to improve GDP but stay closer to home—http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/11/29/beyond-gdp-get-ready-for-a-new-way-to-measure-the-economy/. 27. Interview with Vitalik Buterin, September 30, 2015. 28.

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
by Jason Hickel
Published 12 Aug 2020

That’s beginning to change, however. Growthism is starting to lose its ideological grip, even among some of the world’s most prominent economists. In 2008, the French government established a high-level commission to define success in ways other than just GDP. In the same year, the OECD and the European Union launched their ‘Beyond GDP’ campaigns. As part of this effort, the Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen published a report titled ‘Mismeasuring our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t add Up’. In it, they took up Kuznets’ plea and argued that over-reliance on GDP blinds us to what’s happening to social and ecological health.

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Third World Quarterly 40(1), 2019, pp. 18–35 (This research builds on Daniel O’Neill et al., ‘A good life for all within planetary boundaries,’ Nature Sustainability, 2018, p. 88–95); Jason Hickel, ‘The Sustainable Development Index: measuring the ecological efficiency of human development in the Anthropocene,’ Ecological Economics 167, 2020. 12 Ida Kubiszewski et al., ‘Beyond GDP: Measuring and achieving global genuine progress,’ Ecological Economics 93, 2013, pp. 57–68. The authors draw on Max-Neef to interpret this threshold as the point at which the social and environmental costs of GDP growth become significant enough to cancel out consumption-related gains. See Manfred Max-Neef, ‘Economic growth and quality of life: a threshold hypothesis,’ Ecological Economics 15(2), 1995, pp. 115–118.

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Published 20 Jan 2014

Chapter 1 THE BIG STORIES Chapter 2 THE SKILLS OF THE NEW MACHINES: TECHNOLOGY RACES AHEAD Chapter 3 MOORE’S LAW AND THE SECOND HALF OF THE CHESSBOARD Chapter 4 THE DIGITIZATION OF JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING Chapter 5 INNOVATION: DECLINING OR RECOMBINING? Chapter 6 ARTIFICIAL AND HUMAN INTELLIGENCE IN THE SECOND MACHINE AGE Chapter 7 COMPUTING BOUNTY Chapter 8 BEYOND GDP Chapter 9 THE SPREAD Chapter 10 THE BIGGEST WINNERS: STARS AND SUPERSTARS Chapter 11 IMPLICATIONS OF THE BOUNTY AND THE SPREAD Chapter 12 LEARNING TO RACE WITH MACHINES: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR INDIVIDUALS Chapter 13 POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS Chapter 14 LONG-TERM RECOMMENDATIONS Chapter 15 TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE (Which Is Very Different from “Technology Is the Future”) Acknowledgments Notes Illustration Sources Index “Technology is a gift of God.

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More details can be found in Erik Brynjolfsson and Adam Saunders, Wired for Innovation: How Information Technology Is Reshaping the Economy (Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press, 2013). 18. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, productivity growth averaged 2.4 percent between 2001 and 2010, 2.3 percent between 1991 and 2000, 1.5 percent between 1981 and 1990, and 1.7 percent between 1971 and 1980. Chapter 8 BEYOND GDP 1. Joel Waldfogel, “Copyright Protection, Technological Change, and the Quality of New Products: Evidence from Recorded Music Since Napster,” Working Paper (National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2011), http://www.nber.org/papers/w17503. 2. Albert Gore, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change (New York: Random House, 2013), p. 45. 3.

Leading From the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies
by Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer
Published 14 Apr 2013

The U.school has the potential to institutionalize the teaching and learning of these capacities in a way that could make them available on a scale that is commensurate with the crisis that we face—like the critical mass of people that we’re meeting in the Bronx who are ready to shift the terrain of social movements. THE GLOBAL WELL-BEING AND GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS LAB: INNOVATING BEYOND GDP What we want to see is nothing less than transformative—graduates who are genuine human beings, realizing their full and true potential, caring for others—including other species—ecologically literate, contemplative as well as analytical in their understanding of the world, free of greed and without excessive desires; knowing, understanding, and appreciating completely that they are not separate from the natural world and from others—in sum manifesting their humanity fully. … In the end, a GNH-educated graduate will have no doubt that his or her happiness derives only from contributing to the happiness of others.

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We know that true abiding happiness cannot exist while others suffer, and comes only from serving others, living in harmony with nature, and realizing our innate wisdom and the true and brilliant nature of our own mind.7 The inauguration of the Global Well-Being and GNH Lab in January 2013 brought together some of the leading innovators who are pushing us “beyond GDP”—people in governments, civil society, and the business sector from countries as different as Bhutan, Germany, India, the United States, Sri Lanka, China, Brazil, and Scotland. They include the core team of the GNH Centre in Bhutan, a state governor and First Lady from the United States who seek to increase the social and ecological well-being in their state; key change-makers from Natura (Brazil), Eileen Fisher (United States), BALLE (North America), OECD (Paris), Oxfam UK, and SEWA, the Self Employed Women’s Association in India, which, with its 1.7 million members, builds capacity for entrepreneurship and local economies inspired by Gandhian principles.

Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Published 28 Jan 2020

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Labour Productivity Levels in the Total Economy,” OECD.Stat, Nov. 2013, https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LEVEL#. 11. Paul J. Zak and Stephen Knack, “Trust and Growth,” The Economic Journal 111, no. 470 (2001): 295–321. 12. Joseph E. Stiglitz, “Beyond GDP,” Project Syndicate, Dec. 3, 2018, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/new-metrics-of-wellbeing-not-just-gdp-by-joseph-e-stiglitz-2018-12. 13. Jan Strupczewski, “German Position Paper Urges Wider Role for Euro Zone Bailout Fund,” Reuters, Oct. 9, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/eurozone-eurogroup-esm-germany/update-1-german-position-paper-urges-wider-role-for-euro-zone-bailout-fund-idUSL8N1MK5B9.

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This is the major message of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Better Living Index and the Report of the International Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. See Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, and Amartya Sen, Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up (New York: The New Press, 2010); and the subsequent report of the High-Level Expert Group at the OECD, Measuring What Counts: Moving beyond GDP (New York: The New Press, 2019). 3. “Human Development Indices and Indicators,” UNDP, 2018 Statistical Update (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2018). 4. As a result of multiple market imperfections, including imperfect information and incomplete risk markets. Stiglitz first established this result in 1972.

The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as if the Future Matters
by Diane Coyle
Published 21 Feb 2011

At the close of its second World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge, and Policy held in Istanbul in 2007, participants (including the World Bank and the UN Development Program) agreed on the need for national statistical offices, academics, and public and private bodies to work with civil society to identify a “new paradigm” of social progress going beyond GDP. Included in these indicators are health, education, and the environment, as well as employment, productivity, and purchasing power. The third world forum was held in September 2009 in Busan, Korea.22 At its conclusion the OECD committed to producing a “road map” for the international community to develop an agreed set of indicators of “progress.”23 The weight of opinion seems to be tipping firmly toward the dashboard approach, introducing a range of supplementary indicators in addition to GDP.24 Many national statistical offices now produce “satellite accounts,” usually looking at environmental measures, and more are also producing other types of measures such as time-use surveys looking at unpaid work at home.

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pid=289. 19http://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/boskinrpt.html; accessed 6 April 2010. For a detailed discussion of these indicators, see Coyle (2001), 11–17, and Coyle (2009), 103–9. 20 Nordhaus (2002). 21 Sen, Stiglitz, and Fitoussi (2009). 22 OECD World Forum, http://www.oecworldforum2009.org/, http://www.beyond-gdp.eu/download/bgdp-summary-notes.pdf. 23http://www.oecd.org/document/53/0,3343,en_40033426_40037349_43963509_1_1_1_1,00.html. Accessed 31 March 2010. 24 See for example Kropp (2009). 25 Australian Bureau of Statistics, Mapping Australia’s Progress, http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/mf/1383.0.55.001?

Tyler Cowen - Stubborn Attachments A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals
by Meg Patrick

Hurley, Paul. Beyond Consequentialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Ipcher, John and Zarghamee, Homa, “Happiness and Time Preference” The Effect of Positive Affect in a Random-Assignment Experiment,” American Economic Review, December 2011, 3109-3129. Jones, Charles I. and Klenow, Peter J., “Beyond GDP?: Welfare across Countries and Time,” unpublished manuscript 2010. Jones-Lee, M.W., editor. 1982. The Value of Life and Safety, North-Holland Publishing Company. Kagan, Shelley. Normative Ethics. Boulder: Westview Press, 1998. Kagan, Shelly, “Do I Make a Difference?”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2011, 39, 2, 105-141.

Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals
by Tyler Cowen
Published 15 Oct 2018

Beyond Consequentialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ipcher, John, and Homa Zarghamee. 2011. “Happiness and Time Preference: The Effect of Positive Affect in a Random-Assignment Experiment.” American Economic Review 101, no. 7 (December): 3109–3129. Jones, Charles I., and Peter J. Klenow. 2016. “Beyond GDP?: Welfare Across Countries and Time.” American Economic Review 106, no. 9: 2426–2457. Jones-Lee, M.W., ed. 1982. The Value of Life and Safety. North-Holland Publishing Company. Kagan, Shelley. 1998. Normative Ethics. Boulder: Westview Press. Kagan, Shelly. 2011. “Do I Make a Difference?”

GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History
by Diane Coyle
Published 23 Feb 2014

But rather than continue down the path of making the definitions and refinements ever more complicated, statisticians and economists should think more deeply about what we mean by “the economy” in the twenty-first century. The structure and character of the economy has changed profoundly as growth has continued over the decades. “GDP mainly measures market production,” according to the high-profile Sen-Stiglitz-Fitoussi commission looking at measures “Beyond GDP.” This gets it backward: GDP defines market production, which is then measured by the official statisticians. But there is no clear definition of “the economy” that would stand for all time, and around which one can measure “satellites” like the environment or housework. Rather, the economy is a fluid concept, which could and probably should be redefined.

Unsustainable Inequalities: Social Justice and the Environment
by Lucas Chancel
Published 15 Jan 2020

One might reasonably have supposed that economic inequality, as only one among more than a hundred SDG indicators, would very quickly have been drowned in a sea of data and forgotten. But this turns out not to be the case at all—it is taken very seriously. In the wake of the Stiglitz Commission’s report on new measures of progress, many countries (and regions) have adopted national performance indicators aimed at “going beyond GDP.”8 With regard to eighteen national or regional initiatives, three-quarters of the data sets include at least one indicator of economic inequality.9 Finally, at least in theory, the use of a common indicator for this purpose within the SDG framework does more than merely classify performance; it also encourages states to learn from their neighbors.

The Globalization of Inequality
by François Bourguignon
Published 1 Aug 2012

The income missing from the surveys, the taxes, and transfers in cash or in kind that are omitted, the consumption of public goods, and so forth, are certainly not proportional to reported income in the surveys. What’s more, we know that per capita GDP is a very imperfect indicator of the economic well-­being of a nation’s citizens. The Sen-­ Stiglitz-­Fitoussi5 report on the need to go “beyond GDP” to measure social welfare was enough to convince anyone who might have remained undecided. Unfortunately, we are still some way from having the statistics we would need to improve our comparative measures of individual standards of living for a representative sample of countries and over the long term.

The Purpose Economy: How Your Desire for Impact, Personal Growth and Community Is Changing the World
by Aaron Hurst
Published 31 Aug 2013

That represented a 25 percent increase over a similar measure ten years earlier, but one certainly couldn’t describe it as a dominant part of our economy.5 But defining the Purpose Economy solely in terms of the nonprofit sector is like describing the Information Economy solely in terms of the activity in Silicon Valley today. It excludes a big part of the picture that lies outside of this central sector. The impact of both economies reaches far beyond GDP statistics, but the Purpose Economy transcends facts and figures to grasp at something even deeper—the aspirations of the human soul. The nonprofit sector is certainly core to the Purpose Economy, but it is by no means the only sector driven by the provision of services to improve lives, inspire personal growth, or expand community.

The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations
by David Pilling
Published 30 Jan 2018

It was not invented there; its history goes back at least to the 1970s, when economists William Nordhaus and James Tobin began to think about what they called “measure of economic welfare.”1 Using GDP as a base measure, they added previously invisible “goods” such as leisure time and unpaid housework, and subtracted what they quaintly called regrettables, including commuting time, pollution, and spending on crime prevention. Variations on the same theme were developed over the years by academics and practitioners. The GPI, which came out of work begun by Herman Daly, an ecological economist, is one of the most enduring of an alphabet soup of attempts to go beyond GDP. One way of thinking about these measurements is as net domestic product. Remember the G in gross domestic product stands for “gross,” with little account taken of depreciation of assets, especially natural ones, nor the side effects of production. By subtracting the bads, the various alternative indexes use GDP as a starting point and then attempt to come up with a more reasonable net figure.

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning
by Jeremy Lent
Published 22 May 2017

,” Atlantic Monthly, October 1995. 70. Cobb, Halstead, and Rowe, “If the GDP Is Up”; Ida Kubiszewski et al., “Beyond GDP: Measuring and Achieving Global Genuine Progress,” Ecological Economics 93 (2013): 57–68. 71. Cobb, Halstead, and Rowe, “If the GDP Is Up”; Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, 44; Jon Hall, “Measuring What Matters to Make a Difference,” Journal of Futures Studies 15, no. 2 (2010): 151–54. 72. Cobb, Halstead, and Rowe, “If the GDP Is Up”; Schellnhuber et al., “World in Transition,” 74–76. 73. Kubiszewski et al., “Beyond GDP.” 74. Ronald Inglehart, “Globalization and Postmodern Values,” Washington Quarterly 23, no. 1 (2000): 215–28.

Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity Into Prosperity
by Bernard Lietaer and Jacqui Dunne
Published 4 Feb 2013

It would illustrate how TimeBanking can be used in many ways, including social projects with many others throughout the world and including Hub members. The goal is to be “an exploration of the heart of happiness,” which is compassion, community, and deep connections between each other, envisioning ways to move beyond GDP to Gross National Happiness based on other metrics.” 132 PROSPERITY FRIENDLY FAVORS One of the most consistent outcomes reported by participants involved in cooperative currency initiatives is the development of a renewed sense of community and support from that community. Perhaps surprisingly, as a result of using a currency to acknowledge caring, assistance, or even random acts of kindness, the need to use the very currency that cultivated those behaviors and in a way kept score dissipates over time.

Stuffocation
by James Wallman
Published 6 Dec 2013

For a moving version of what GDP does not measure, look up Robert Kennedy’s 1969 speech set to (almost) stirring music on YouTube. To find out more about alternatives to GDP, read Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth (London: Earthscan, 2009) and Joseph E Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Mismeasuring Our Lives (New York: New Press, 2010). Also, Jules Evans, “Beyond GDP: Towards a Better Measurement of National Wellbeing in France and the UK”, Franco-British Council report, 2 February 2011. Jon Gertner, “The Rise and Fall of the GDP”, New York Times, 13 May 2010. Nicolas Sarkozy Has a Problem Sarkozy’s popularity nose-diving Source: Crispian Balmer, “French fall out of love with smitten Sarkozy”, Reuters, 4 February 2008.

The Day the World Stops Shopping
by J. B. MacKinnon
Published 14 May 2021

I can become a deconsumer, but it will make me an outsider from society, or even an outcast, making it unlikely I’ll stick with the change. When I reduce my personal consumption, it does not pressure governments to require that products be made repairable, address the income inequality and insecurity that fuels overconsumption, or think beyond GDP growth. It won’t create the infrastructure for citizenship, participation or any other social role to replace that of the consumer. Intrigued by the research of Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt and Elizabeth Shove, I have, as an experiment, chosen to live within a wider range of natural temperatures in my home.

Making Globalization Work
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Published 16 Sep 2006

Whether subsidizing them is a good way for the French government to spend its money should be a matter for the French people to decide. If they spend it well, not only those in France but filmgoers around the world will benefit. Then there is the question of the environment that I mention here because it speaks to the question of values. In chapter 2, I stressed the importance of a vision of development which goes beyond GDP. For some, treating the environment with respect is a matter of basic values. For others, it is a matter of fairness to future generations: if we despoil the environment and squander our natural resources, we jeopardize the future. Sound environmental policies are essential if development is to be sustainable.

Termites of the State: Why Complexity Leads to Inequality
by Vito Tanzi
Published 28 Dec 2017

Jensen, Michael and William Meckling, 1976, “Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure,” Journal of Financial. Bibliography 411 Jimenez, Juan Pablo, editor, 2015, Desigualdad, concentracion del ingreso y tributacion sibre las altas rentas en America Latina (Santiago, Chile: Cepal). Jones, Charles I. and Peter J. Klenow, 2016, “Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time,” The American Economic Review 106 (9) (September), pp. 2426–2457. The Journal of Political Perspective, Summer 2013. Kahneman, Daniel, 1994, “New Challenges to the Rationality Assumption,” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 150, pp. 18–36. Kahneman, Daniel and Richard H.

Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities
by Vaclav Smil
Published 23 Sep 2019

The Evolutionary Trajectory: The Growth of Information in the History and Future of Earth. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Corner, E. J. H. 1964. The Life of Plants. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Costanza, R., et al. 1997. An Introduction to Ecological Economics. Boca Raton, FL: St. Lucie Press and International Society for Ecological Economics. Costanza, R., et al. 2009. Beyond GDP: The Need for New Measures of Progress. Boston: Boston University Press. Cotterell, B., and J. Kamminga. 1990. Machines of Pre-industrial Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cox, M. M., and J. R. Battista 2005. Deinococcus radiodurans—the consummate survivor. Nature Reviews. Microbiology 3:882–892.