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Smithian National Product and the Wealth of African Nations
Author(s) -
GERDES WILLIAM D.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
american journal of economics and sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.199
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1536-7150
pISSN - 0002-9246
DOI - 10.1111/j.1536-7150.2004.00308.x
Subject(s) - national income and product accounts , gross domestic product , economics , national accounts , measure (data warehouse) , measures of national income and output , per capita , real gross domestic product , product (mathematics) , per capita income , gross domestic income , macroeconomics , econometrics , classical economics , monetary economics , public economics , mathematics , sociology , demography , computer science , gross income , population , geometry , tax reform , database , state income tax
A bstract . Given the contemporary interest in growth, conventional measures of economic growth (changes in real GDP or real GDP per capita) may be less preferable than a measure that is more plutological by design. The plutological measure presented in this paper is that of Adam Smith (1776). While Smith's work pre‐dated formal national income accounting, there was a macroeconomic accounting scheme implicit in his theorizing on economic growth. This study articulates Adam Smith's concept of national product (referred to as Smithian national product, or SNP). It uses current output data to compute SNP for a set of six African countries, and examines the growth experience of these countries when using SNP as opposed to the more conventional GDP measure.