For years, measuring economic welfare has been pretty straightforward. Classic economics obsess over a single value: gross domestic product. Luckily, economic paradigms are shifting, and experts are ...

But it’s far from perfect. GDP is a poor measure of welfare. It tallies up all the goods and services produced in an economy—putting equal value on $100 whether it’s spent on concert tickets or ...

Diane Coyle’s new book, GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History, is a timely contribution to discussions of modern economic performance. She argues that Gross Domestic Product increasingly ...

Paul Allin is a member of the UK National Statistician's Expert User Advisory Committee and he is the Royal Statistical Society's Honorary Officer for National Statistics. Views expressed in this ...