ABSTRACT
The metric that is most often cited to assess overall economic performance is gross domestic product (GDP)—a measure of the total production level of a country over a certain time period. For example, the economy is said to be in a recession when its GDP decreases for two consecutive quarters. An increase in GDP is viewed as a sign of a strengthening economy. The idea of creating a system of national accounting to guide US economic policies first took hold during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt knew that national production was down, but other than a few numbers representing the volumes of railroad shipments and steel production, they had no information on how much it was down. The Department of Commerce commissioned economist Simon Kuznets to begin to develop national accounts.
