Beyond GDP: New Metrics for a Global Economy

Amid globalization, traditional economic measures like Gross Domestic Product (GDP), unemployment, and stock markets leave governments and citizens with a distorted worldview - and a shaky foundation for policy decisions. In the Information Age, aren't there better indicators to manage our country's well-being? This course investigates problems with conventional statistics used for assessing national output, unemployment, inflation, productivity, and trade, among others. Many conventional statistics for crafting public policies have unintended consequences that have led to financial meltdowns, environmental degradation, and economic inequality, among others negative externalities.