Economic Growth: Measurement

Abstract

Measuring economic performance of a country is – arguably – one of the most important contributions of empirical economics. Historically, the national income accounting system was designed for maximizing the government earnings by finding better ways of imposing higher taxes. In contemporary economies, economic growth and their estimation approaches have become instrumental in devising social welfare maximizing policies in a more systemic way. This article embodies most of the fundamental measuring techniques of national accounting system in retrospect, and indicates several secondary data sources that are widely used in growth empirics.