GDP – the indicator we love to hate

By Steve MacFeely (UNCTAD) and Cecilia Tinonin (UN Women)

The adoption in 1953 of the United Nations System of National Accounts also played a profoundly important role in globalizing GDP. Richard Stone, who chaired the first UN Expert Group on the System of National Accounts (SNA), and considered by many to be the father of modern GDP, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1984.

Here is our monthly guest column by Dr. Steve MacFeely, currently Head of Statistics and Information at UNCTAD. He will soon join the World Health Organisation, (WHO), as the Director of Data and Analytics, this coming July.