What is Gross Domestic Product?

Picture the economy as a giant supermarket, with billions of goods and services inside. At the checkout line, you watch as the cashier rings up the price for each finished good or service sold. What have you just observed?

The cashier is computing a very important number: gross domestic product, or GDP.

GDP is the market value of all finished goods and services, produced within a country in a year.

But, what does "market value" mean? And what defines a "finished good"?

These, and more questions, percolate inside your head. Meanwhile, the cashier starts ringing up the total, and you’re left confused. An array of things pass by you — A bottle of wine. A carton of eggs. A cake from the local bakers. A tractor, of all things. A bunch of ballpens. A bag of flour.

In this video, join us as we show you how to make sense of this important economic indicator. You’ll learn how GDP is computed, and you’ll get answers to some pretty interesting questions along the way.

Questions like, “Why are the eggs in my homemade omelet part of the GDP, but the eggs my baker uses are not? Why does my bottle of French wine contribute to France’s GDP, even if I bought it in the United States?”

Most importantly, you’ll also learn why polar bears aren’t part of the GDP computation, even if they’re incredibly cute.

So, buckle in for a bit—in the following videos we’ll dive into specifics on GDP.

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- [Narrator] What is
Gross Domestic Product,

otherwise known as GDP?

Gross Domestic Product is the market value
of all finished goods and services

produced within a country in a year.

Think about the economy
like a giant supermarket

filled with millions of goods,
like dresses, and washing machines,

and services,
like dog walking and massages.

Every time a finished good
or service is sold, we ring up the price.

At the end of the year,
we ring up the total -- that's the GDP.

Let's look more closely
at some of the details.

Notice that we said GDP
is the market value

of all finished goods and services.

A finished good or service is one

that will not be sold again
as part of some other good.

When a bakery buys
flour, eggs, and butter,

we don't count these sales in GDP
because these goods aren't finished.

They are intermediate goods that,
when combined, will become

a finished good -- a cake, for example.

But, if a consumer buys an egg
to make an omelet,

the egg is a finished good

because it won't be sold again
as part of some other good.

In other words, our GDP supermarket
is like a real supermarket.

At the GDP register, we ring up
the eggs sold to consumers,

and the cakes, but we don't ring up
the eggs the baker used to make the cake.

There are also goods
that are used to make other goods,

but are still considered finished goods.
These are called capital goods.

If Caterpillar produces a tractor
and sells it to a farm,

the tractor is considered a finished good.

The tractor is finished
and its value is added to the GDP.

Although the tractor is used
to make other goods,

it won't be sold again
as part of another good,

so the tractor is still a finished good.

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The GDP is the market value
of all finished goods and services

produced within a country in a year.

GDP only counts production.

If an old house is sold this year,
that doesn't add to GDP

since the house wasn't produced this year.
Only the sale of new houses add to GDP.

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GDP also only counts goods and services
produced within a country.

If you buy a bottle of wine
imported from France,

that adds to France's GDP,
not to U.S. GDP.

On the other hand, a computer
produced in the United States

and exported to France
adds to the U.S. GDP.

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Let's go back to the definition
one more time,

to see some of the limits of GDP
as a measure of economic production.

GDP is the market value
of all finished goods and services

produced within a country in a year.

If a good isn't bought
and sold in a market,

then it's not typically counted in GDP.

Why not? Counting the market value

of, say, all the breakfast cereal
produced in the U.S. is easy,

at least in principle.

Just add up the price every time
a box of cereal is sold.

Since market prices are observable,
every statistician who counts carefully

will come up with pretty much
the same number.

But, without market prices,
there's no easy or agreed upon way

to calculate how much a good is worth.

Polar bears, for example,
aren't counted in GDP.

The statisticians and economists
who calculate GDP

have nothing against polar bears.

The problem is that there's no easy way
to calculate how valuable polar bears are.

Just because GDP
doesn't include polar bears

doesn't mean that
we can't love polar bears.

And if polar bears were included in GDP,

that wouldn't require us
to love polar bears either.

Ultimately, GDP is just a number.
But it's a useful number.

In the next few videos, we'll show
how the GDP number can be used

as a measure of the standard of living.

But for that, we'll have to make
a distinction between the Nominal GDP,

what we have just discussed so far,
and Real GDP. So stay tuned.

- [Narrator] If you want to test yourself,
click "Practice Questions."

Or, if you're ready to move on,
you can click "Go to the Next Video."

You can also visit MRUniversity.com

to see our entire library
of videos and resources.

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