UNDERSTANDING ECONOMICS Gross Domestic Product

This is a 16-page article describing the most basic and comprehensive measure of the economy’s performance, the gross domestic product. The government constantly monitors the rate of growth of the GDP, and bad GDP news can throw the stock market into a spin. The official definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of decline in the GDP. This article describes how the GDP is measured and how it is used by policy makers in trying to follow sound economic policies.