Ben Waber reviewed The Little Big Number by Dirk Philipsen
An Incisive History of GDP
5 stars
The bulk of this book is a can't miss history of economic measurement and how the GDP metric came to become such an unquestioned, powerful metric across the world. This is unfortunately accompanied by an uninformed degrowth screed, which is thankfully quite short and should be skipped (if you're curious about why this stance is ridiculous, I recommend "Growth" by Susskind).
Overall this book makes a good companion to the books on GDP by Coyle, as it gets much more into the weeds around the organizational and social conditions of its development, as well as deeply examining the diffusion of GDP as a core economic and political concept. Highly recommend
The bulk of this book is a can't miss history of economic measurement and how the GDP metric came to become such an unquestioned, powerful metric across the world. This is unfortunately accompanied by an uninformed degrowth screed, which is thankfully quite short and should be skipped (if you're curious about why this stance is ridiculous, I recommend "Growth" by Susskind).
Overall this book makes a good companion to the books on GDP by Coyle, as it gets much more into the weeds around the organizational and social conditions of its development, as well as deeply examining the diffusion of GDP as a core economic and political concept. Highly recommend