Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

The GDP Is a Flawed But Magical Indicator

It isn't an exact science, but the results usually make sense.

April 3, 2017 at 5:32 PM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Martin Feldstein has an optimistic argument.
Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg

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Economists have long argued that the gross domestic product has many flaws as a measure of well-being and policy success. Yet there's a good reason it's still being used: There's a certain magic to it, despite its science being somewhat iffy.

QuickTake GDP: Measuring Income or Well-Being?