Brynjolfsson Pushes GDP-B: Digital Goods Create Value Yet GDP May Fall
erikbryn · x · 2026-09-13
Economist Erik Brynjolfsson, with David Deming and others, discusses how GDP mismeasures the digital economy and promotes GDP-B (gdp-b.org), a new framework for measuring welfare and growth.
Key points:
- Many goods and services create tremendous value but are not fully reflected in GDP — most notably digital goods, along with home production, health, safety, and environmental quality.
- In many cases, conventional GDP will actually fall as these goods are created or improve, since GDP uses price as a proxy for value and misses free digital services' consumer surplus.
- GDP-B proposes a new method designed for an intangible, increasingly digital service economy, closing the widening gap between measured GDP and actual consumer welfare.
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