Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"The reader comes away persuaded that GNP, although an imperfect summary indicator of the state of an economy, plays an outsize role in contemporary conceptions of economic policy and performance." * Foreign Affairs *
“This book asks a profoundly important question: What counts as progress? Since the mid-twentieth century, the answer has been the narrow one: economic growth as measured by GDP. Although there have been genuine gains from higher incomes and innovation, this has undermined progress by undervaluing many kinds of work, increasing inequality to a socially intolerable degree, and hastening climate change and environmental degradation. Macekura argues convincingly that we need a better future and better measures.” -- Diane Coyle, University of Cambridge
“
The Mismeasure of Progress is a highly readable and informative book about the champions and critics of the idea of economic growth over the last several decades. Macekura writes with the kind of urgency and
engagé spirit that makes this book not only good scholarship but an important public intervention.” -- Quinn Slobodian, Wellesley College
"What he brings is a unified story about the critics of GDP and the System of National Accounts told from the 1940s on, and particularly including the perspective of the economists and statisticians working on or in developing economies.” * Enlightened Economist *
"Macekura does an impressive job surveying the critique of ‘growth as progress’ from the earliest days to the present, and then showing how it was largely ignored. His argument is beautifully written and compelling." * Survival: Global Politics and Strategy *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Meaning and Measurement of Economic Growth
1 Standard of Living, GNP, and the Narrowing of National Statistics
2 Decolonization and the Limits of Economic Measurement
3 The Growth Critics
4 The Growth Paradigm in Crisis
5 The Search for Alternatives
6 Revival and Debate at the End of the Twentieth Century
Conclusion: History, Narrative, and Contemporary Growth Critics
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
