How best to measure a nation's well-being is attracting more attention. For a long time, some economists have argued that per capita GDP is not an adequate way to measure well-being, but few governments paid attention. In 2009, French president Nicolas Sarkozy appointed a commission to come up...

For a couple of decades now, the economic historian Angus Maddison has been the preeminent historian of long-term economic growth. The Canadian economist Andrew Sharpe assesses his most recent work and finds that it challenges many former assumptions.