Economics Samuelson Paul A and Nordhaus Chapter5英文电子书.pdf

sam14893_ch05_088 11/17/00 10:28 AM Page 88 Of all the concepts in macroeconomics, the single most important measure is the gross domestic product (GDP), which measures the total value of goods and services produced in a country. GDP is part of the national income and product accounts (or national accounts), which are a body of statistics that enable pol- icymakers to determine whether the economy is contracting or ex- panding and whether a severe recession or inflation threatens. When economists want to determine the level of economic de- velopment of a country, they look at its GDP per capita. While the GDP and the rest of the national accounts may seem to be arcane concepts, they are truly among the great inventions of the twentieth century. Much as C H A P T E R a satellite in space can survey the weather across an entire continent, so can the GDP give an overall pic- ture of the state of the economy. In this chapter, we explain how economists measure GDP and