IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/euf/dispap/142.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economic Policy-Making Beyond GDP An Introduction

Author

Listed:
  • Alessio Terzi

Abstract

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) started to be used during World War II to measure the material production needs of the conflict. Throughout the decades, several issues have been identified with measuring economic success via this single indicator. Most prominently, GDP fails to inform decision makers on how the benefits of growth spread across the population, and to what extent these are concentrated in certain pockets of society. Moreover, it does not take into account the depletion of natural resources and environmental sustainability more broadly. As these have become increasingly pressing concerns for policymakers and the public at large, over the past decade, statistical institutes (including Eurostat) have been developing new complementary indicators, which have been embraced to various degrees by several governments and international organisations. At the current juncture, the challenge is to bring these indicators into more active policy-making in a sensible and manageable way. This paper therefore reviews the pros and cons of some of the ongoing efforts, in Europe and beyond, laying out potential avenues for future scholarship on the topic.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessio Terzi, 2021. "Economic Policy-Making Beyond GDP An Introduction," European Economy - Discussion Papers 142, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
  • Handle: RePEc:euf:dispap:142
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/publications/economic-policy-making-beyond-gdp-introduction_en
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lant Pritchett & Lawrence H. Summers, 1996. "Wealthier is Healthier," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 31(4), pages 841-868.
    2. Thomas Piketty, 2015. "Putting Distribution Back at the Center of Economics: Reflections on Capital in the Twenty-First Century," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(1), pages 67-88, Winter.
    3. Werner Roeger & Janos Varga & Jan in 't Veld & Lukas Vogel, 2019. "A Model-Based Assessment of the Distributional Impact of Structural Reforms," European Economy - Discussion Papers 091, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    4. William D. Nordhaus & James Tobin, 1973. "Is Growth Obsolete?," NBER Chapters, in: The Measurement of Economic and Social Performance, pages 509-564, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Gran, Christoph & Gechert, Sebastian & Barth, Jonathan, 2019. "Growth, Prosperity and the environment: Integrating environmental and social indicators into QUEST," ZOE Discussion Papers 4, ZOE. institute for future-fit economies, Bonn.
    6. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4vsqk7docb9nmophtp29pk68cr is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Thomas Tørsløv & Ludvig Wier & Gabriel Zucman, 2023. "The Missing Profits of Nations," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 90(3), pages 1499-1534.
    8. Stefan Angel & Richard Heuberger & Nadja Lamei, 2018. "Differences Between Household Income from Surveys and Registers and How These Affect the Poverty Headcount: Evidence from the Austrian SILC," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 138(2), pages 575-603, July.
    9. Sheffer, Lior & Loewen, Peter John & Soroka, Stuart & Walgrave, Stefaan & Sheafer, Tamir, 2018. "Nonrepresentative Representatives: An Experimental Study of the Decision Making of Elected Politicians - CORRIGENDUM," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 112(2), pages 428-428, May.
    10. Andrea Conte & Ariane Labat & Janos Varga & Ziga Zarnic, 2010. "What is the growth potential of green innovation? An assessment of EU climate policy options," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 413, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    11. Michael E. Mann & Raymond S. Bradley & Malcolm K. Hughes, 1998. "Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries," Nature, Nature, vol. 392(6678), pages 779-787, April.
    12. Christian Kroll & Anne Warchold & Prajal Pradhan, 2019. "Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Are we successful in turning trade-offs into synergies?," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-11, December.
    13. Bennet Berger & Guntram B. Wolff, 2017. "The global decline in the labour income share- is capital the answer to Germany’s current account surplus?," Policy Contributions 20285, Bruegel.
    14. Sheffer, Lior & Loewen, Peter John & Soroka, Stuart & Walgrave, Stefaan & Sheafer, Tamir, 2018. "Nonrepresentative Representatives: An Experimental Study of the Decision Making of Elected Politicians," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 112(2), pages 302-321, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Octavian Șerban, 2022. "The Multilevel Knowledge Economy Pyramid Model as a Flexible Solution to Address the Impact of Adverse Events in the Economy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-15, September.
    2. Alessia Arcidiacono & Gianpiero Torrisi, 2022. "Decentralisation and Resilience: A Multidimensional Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-25, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Laura Hueber & Rene Schwaiger, 2021. "Debiasing Through Experience Sampling: The Case of Myopic Loss Aversion," Working Papers 2021-01, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    2. Donato Masciandaro, 2023. "Politicians, Trust and Financial Literacy: When Do Politicians Care?," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 23206, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    3. Sandro Ambuehl & Sebastian Blesse & Philipp Doerrenberg & Christoph Feldhaus & Axel Ockenfels, 2023. "Politicians' Social Welfare Criteria: An Experiment with German Legislators," CESifo Working Paper Series 10329, CESifo.
    4. Aseem Mahajan & Reuben Kline & Dustin Tingley, 2022. "Collective Risk and Distributional Equity in Climate Change Bargaining," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 66(1), pages 61-90, January.
    5. Schwaiger, Rene & Kirchler, Michael & Lindner, Florian & Weitzel, Utz, 2020. "Determinants of investor expectations and satisfaction. A study with financial professionals," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    6. Sandro Ambuehl & B. Douglas Bernheim & Axel Ockenfels, 2019. "Projective Paternalism," CESifo Working Paper Series 7762, CESifo.
    7. Winton Bates, 2009. "Gross national happiness," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, Asia Pacific School of Economics and Government, The Australian National University, vol. 23(2), pages 1-16, November.
    8. Barbara Vis & Sjoerd Stolwijk, 2021. "Conducting quantitative studies with the participation of political elites: best practices for designing the study and soliciting the participation of political elites," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 55(4), pages 1281-1317, August.
    9. Binswanger, Johannes & Oechslin, Manuel, 2020. "Better statistics, better economic policies?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    10. Hueber, Laura & Schwaiger, Rene, 2022. "Debiasing through experience sampling: The case of myopic loss aversion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 87-138.
    11. Albert Argilaga & Jijian Fan, 2022. "Optimal Policymaking under Yardstick Vote: An Experimental Study," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-24, May.
    12. Michael Razen & Michael Kirchler & Utz Weitzel, 2019. "Determinants Of Prepaid Systems Of Healthcare Financing - A Worldwide Country-Level Perspective," Working Papers 2019-12, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    13. Ambuehl, Sandro & Blesse, Sebastian & Doerrenberg, Philipp & Feldhaus, Christoph & Ockenfels, Axel, 2023. "Politicians' social welfare criteria - An experiment with German legislators," ZEW Discussion Papers 23-013, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    14. Razen, Michael & Kirchler, Michael & Weitzel, Utz, 2020. "Domain-specific risk-taking among finance professionals," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(C).
    15. Hartwell, Christopher A. & Devinney, Timothy, 2021. "Populism, political risk, and pandemics: The challenges of political leadership for business in a post-COVID world," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 56(4).
    16. Anna Abalkina & Alexander Libman, 2020. "The real costs of plagiarism: Russian governors, plagiarized PhD theses, and infrastructure in Russian regions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2793-2820, December.
    17. Donato Masciandaro, 2023. "Politicians, Trust, Financial Literacy and Financial Education: When Do Politicians Care?," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 23208, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    18. Jean Roisse Rodrigues Ferreira, 2022. "Decision-Making under Risk: Conditions Affecting the Risk Preferences of Politicians in Digitalization," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(5), pages 1-12, March.
    19. Persson, Emil & Tinghög, Gustav, 2020. "Opportunity cost neglect in public policy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 301-312.
    20. Roberto Brunetti & Matthieu Pourieux, 2023. "Representative Policy-Makers? A Behavioral Experiment with French Politicians," Working Papers 2319, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • B20 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - General
    • B40 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - General
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
    • E66 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General Outlook and Conditions
    • I30 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:euf:dispap:142. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ECFIN INFO (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dg2ecbe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.