Rethinking How We Measure Economic Growth Today
Selected theme: Contemporary Methods for Assessing Economic Growth. Explore fresh indicators, real-time data, and human-centered metrics that paint a richer picture of how economies truly evolve and whom progress actually reaches. Join the conversation and help shape smarter measurement.
The Genuine Progress Indicator adjusts output for inequality, environmental depletion, and unpaid work, revealing whether growth translates into lived improvements. When one coastal city piloted GPI, residents saw policy shifts away from sprawl and toward transit, parks, and community health.
Beyond GDP: Why New Composite Metrics Matter
From Space to Growth: Remote Sensing Indicators
Nighttime luminosity correlates with electricity use, industrial activity, and urban expansion. When official data are delayed or disputed, lights provide independent signals. One cross-border corridor doubled brightness after a new highway, anticipating reported GDP growth by nearly a year.
High-resolution imagery maps new roads, rooftops, and logistics hubs, while vegetation indices flag agricultural shocks. Combining these layers enables granular growth maps by district. Share which remote-sensing datasets you want us to unpack next in a hands-on walkthrough.
During a heatwave, satellite observations showed a dimming patchwork across several towns, aligning with factory stoppages and lower weekly tax receipts. Local planners used the signal to prioritize grid upgrades, protecting jobs ahead of the next summer peak.
Nowcasting the Economy in Real Time
Search intensity for jobs, travel, and durable goods can predict near-term spending. LASSO and gradient-boosting models sift thousands of signals, avoiding overfitting with rigorous cross-validation. We will share code-ready recipes—subscribe to receive upcoming playbooks and datasets.
Nowcasting the Economy in Real Time
Card transactions, mobility indices, and freight manifests reveal momentum across sectors faster than surveys. When restaurant card volumes ticked up alongside foot traffic, city tax forecasts improved immediately. What high-frequency series would you trust for your sector’s dashboard?
Firm-Level Dynamics and the Engines of Productivity
Shift-share decompositions separate improvements within surviving firms from reallocation toward more productive ones, plus contributions from startups and closures. In one emerging market, reallocation effects dominated, reshaping policy toward competition and bankruptcy reform.
Firm-Level Dynamics and the Engines of Productivity
Software, design, brands, and organizational know-how often drive growth more than machines. Surveys linking management practices to outcomes show big gaps. Targeted training lifted output per worker without new equipment, reminding us that intangibles merit serious accounting attention.
Inclusive, Human-Centered Measures of Growth
Beyond income, dashboards track health access, learning outcomes, safety, and time use. When one region paired test scores with mental health screens, policy focused on school counseling and nutritious lunches, lifting long-run productivity potential through healthier, better-prepared graduates.
Inclusive, Human-Centered Measures of Growth
Employment rates, childcare availability, transit safety, and digital access shape inclusive growth. Data revealed long commutes suppressing women’s labor force participation; targeted transit investments narrowed the gap. Which inclusion metric should be a headline indicator in your city?
Green-Adjusted Growth and Natural Capital
Carbon-adjusted growth nets out emissions damages, rewarding clean innovation. Countries that decouple output from fossil intensity climb in rank. Share your ideas on sector-level carbon pricing dashboards that businesses and communities can monitor in real time.
Green-Adjusted Growth and Natural Capital
Natural capital accounting values forests, wetlands, and pollinators that underpin agriculture and water security. Satellite vegetation indices combined with hydrology models quantify services, guiding investments that raise growth while protecting the ecological assets that sustain it.
Granular Maps: Cities, Regions, and Corridors
Anonymized mobility data show labor market catchment areas and corridor strengths. When a new bus rapid transit line shrank commute times, job matches improved across neighborhoods. Which corridor in your region deserves a fresh look with these tools?
Granular Maps: Cities, Regions, and Corridors
Output per capita often scales with city size, but zoning and infrastructure determine whether benefits spill over. Mapping firm density against transport access helps identify missing links. We plan a city-by-city series—nominate yours for a deep dive.
Granular Maps: Cities, Regions, and Corridors
Local chambers, universities, and civic groups hold data gold. By pooling building permits, school enrollments, and broadband speeds, communities built a shared dashboard to track momentum. Contribute your dataset and we will feature the story behind the numbers.