Produsul intern brut. Istorie, relevanţă şi limitări în interpretare

Despite theoretical and methodological improvements by national accounts framework revisions, not without disputes and confrontations of views, the growing complexity of economic and social phenomena under globalization circumstances has led to increasing difficulties in the design, monitoring and implementation of specific policies depending on GDP indicator. The paper focuses on the analysis of the GDP relevance and limitations in its interpretation, including a retrospective view. Some inconsistencies as regards the metrics of GDP (illegal activities, unobserved economy, self-consumption in rural households, owner’s imputed rents) are highlighted. Because the GDP does not take into account the impact of important factors of progress (depletion of natural resources, environmental factors, urban concentration and rural depopulation etc.) and does not reflects neither the citizens wellbeing (starting from Easterlin Paradox), efforts to develop new statistical standards in order to complement/substitute GDP with other indicators and/or building composite indicators that integrates various aspects of quality of life have been made, but without meeting a general consensus at the global level.