Contact person: Krzysztof Cybulski
- The European Central Bank must stop publishing GDP forecasts.
- Eurostat and national statistical offices should stop releasing quarterly GDP estimates.
- The European Union must abolish debt-to-GDP limits enshrined in the Stability and Growth Pact.
To allow for informed policymaking, European institutions ought to instead focus on a small number of alternative indicators of economic, environmental, and social life. Plenty of such indicators already exist, but they do not get enough attention. They should be published at least quarterly, and forecasting models ought to be developed for them—just as is done with GDP now. GDP is only an international standard because institutions like the EU make it so.
OVERVIEW
IMPULSE SUMMARY
What is GDP? GDP is a metric of economic activity within a given country. Mankiw (2021) describes it broadly as “the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time.” Its precise definition is more complicated, with the current United Nations System of National Accounts guide measuring up to 722 pages (United Nations et al. 2008). It is computed based on many separate sources: long-time censuses, surveys, sampled prices, tax records, and more (Coyle 2014).
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SUPPORTER
Krzys holds an MSc in Statistics from ETH Zurich and pursues his interest in the transformation of our economic system through his involvement in various pluralist economic working groups.
SUPPORTERS
Krzys holds an MSc in Statistics from ETH Zurich and pursues his interest in the transformation of our economic system through his involvement in various pluralist economic working groups.
