Define GDP and explain its limitations

Short Answer

Expert verified

GDP is a monetary measure of the monetary value of a country's final products and services (i.e., those purchased by the end-user) over time. The following are the limitations:

Non-market transactions are not taken into account.

Failure to account for or represent the magnitude of societal wealth imbalance.

Failure to determine if the country's current growth rate is sustainable

Step by step solution

01

Content Introduction

GDP is the total worth of products and services generated within a country's geographic limits over a given time period, usually a year. The GDP growth rate is a key indicator of a country's economic performance.

02

Content Explanation

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a measure of overall economic activity.

GDP has a number of drawbacks as a measure of well-being- Even if domestic and voluntary work have a significant positive impact on social welfare because they supplement the market economy and hence increase the standard of living, GDP only accounts for market transactions.

GDP does not describe income distribution - When income distribution is extremely uneven, the majority of people do not benefit from the increased economic output because most products are unaffordable. As a result, in order to accurately describe social welfare, income distribution must be considered.

Externalities are ignored by GDP - Economic expansion is frequently accompanied by increased exploitation of both renewable and non-renewable resources. As a result of this overuse, additional negative externalities emerge, and social welfare suffers as a result.

GDP does not describe what is being produced - GDP includes things that may have negative social welfare repercussions since it measures the entire worth of all completed commodities and services in an economy. Consider a country with a robust armament sector that contributes a significant portion of its GDP.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

Each year after a regular spring cleaning, Maria spruces up her home a little by retexturing and repainting the walls of one room in her house. In a given year, she spends \(25on magazines to get ideas about wall textures and paint shades, \)45on newly produced texturing materials and tools, \(35on new paintbrushes and other painting equipment, and \)175on newly produced paint. Normally, she preps the walls, a service that a professional walltexturing specialist would charge \(200to do, and applies two coats of paint, a service that a painter would charge \)350to do, on her own.

a. When she purchases her usual set of materials and does all the work on her home by herself in a given spring, how much does Maria's annual spring texturing and painting activity contribute to GDP?

b. Suppose that Maria hurt her back this year and is recovering from surgery. Her surgeon has instructed her not to do any texturing work, but he has given her the go-ahead to paint a room as long as she is cautious. Thus, she buys all the equipment required to both texture and paint a room. She hires someone else to do the texturing work but does the painting herself. How much would her spring painting activity add to GDP?

c. As a follow-up to part (b), suppose that as soon as Maria bends down to dip her brush into the paint, she realizes that painting will be too hard on her back after all. She decides to hire someone else to do all the work using the materials she has already purchased. In this case, how much will her spring painting activity contribute to GDP?

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Consider Figure 8-4. Explain what is special about the year at which the two data plots cross, and why this is so.

In the table for Problem 8-14, if 2020 is the base year, what is the price index for 2019? (Round decimal fractions to the nearest tenth.)

Which of the following are production activities that are included in GDP? Which are not?

a. Mr. King performs the service of painting his own house instead of paying someone else to do it.

b. Mr. King paints houses for a living.

c. Mrs. King earns income from parents by taking baby photos in her digital photography studio.

d. Mrs. King takes photos of planets and stars as part of her astronomy hobby.

e. ETrade charges fees to process Internet orders for stock trades.

f. Mr. Ho spends \(10,000on shares of stock via an Internet trade order and pays a \)10brokerage fee.

g. Mrs. Ho receives a Social Security payment.

h. Ms. Hernandez makes a $300payment for an Internet-based course on stock trading.

i. Mr. Langham sells a used laptop computer to his neighbor.

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