Diane Coyle on GDP

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2014

⏱️ 59 minutes

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Summary

Diane Coyle, author of GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the history of GDP, its uses, and its abuses. Topics discussed include the origins of GDP in the developed countries, the challenges of measuring the service sector, the challenges of dealing with innovation and product diversity, whether GDP should be supplemented with other measures of human well-being, and the challenges of dealing with internet-based goods that produce a great deal of satisfaction but make a much smaller impact on measured economic activity.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:07.8	of Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org or you can subscribe,
0:14.4	comment on this podcast, and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:19.6	We'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going
0:23.3	back to 2006. Our email address is mailadycontalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.
0:31.6	Today is April 24, 2014, and I want to remind listeners that we have expanded the content at econtalk.org.
0:39.2	In addition to the regular episodes with links and additional readings, Amy Willis of Liberty
0:43.5	Fund and I have been adding discussion questions to check your knowledge and deepen it
0:48.1	along with some post-mortems on some of the episodes. So please check those out and write us
0:52.3	at mailadycontalk.org with any reaction to this new material. My guest today is Diane Coil. Her
1:00.1	latest book is GDP, a brief but affectionate history. Her website is enlightenmenteconomics.com
1:07.6	where she posts book reviews. It does lots of other interesting things including consulting.
1:11.8	Diane, welcome back to econtalk. It's a real pleasure to be talking to you. Our topic for today is
1:17.4	your book GDP, which is a lovely introduction to what might be a tedious topic, but your book is
1:22.2	anything but tedious. Let's start with the basics though. What is GDP? GDP is a measure of
1:31.0	the amount of economic activity measured at market prices. It's the number that allows
1:37.6	policymakers setting the level of tax and spend or setting interest rates to get their arms around
1:44.7	how quickly or otherwise the economy is expanding. And it's been around in its present form for
1:50.8	just a bit over 60 years. It stands for gross domestic product. When I was in graduate school,
1:57.8	we talked about GNB gross national product. What's the difference between the two?
2:03.6	The difference is income received from overseas or in consent overseas. The gross domestic
2:10.9	product measures activity within the national boundary and gross national product measures
	...

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