Showing posts with label economic growth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economic growth. Show all posts

Saturday, January 09, 2010

GDP: friend or foe?

I attended the British Association for the Advancement of Science Conference in Birmingham in 1977, and even then economists were asking whether GDP was a useful measure. The example I remember was eating more sweets and consequently visiting the dentist more often.

Should we be quite so concerned about goosing GDP with quantitative easing etc, or is it just a trap to make us continue misallocating resources?