ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a detailed look at gross domestic product (GDP) and related national economic data. In order to make good macroeconomic policy choices, we need to have reliable information on how the economy is performing. The metric that is most often cited to assess overall economic performance is Gross GDP— a measure of the total production level of a country over a certain time period. One of the common national accounting conventions concerns how the entire economy is broken down into four national accounting sectors. These sectors are: households and institutions sector, business sector, government sector and foreign sector. Although natural, manufactured, human, and social capital are all crucial resources for economic activity, it is primarily manufactured capital that is currently included in the accounting of national non-financial assets. Macroeconomists usually work with GDP measured on a yearly basis.
