Alternatives for evaluating a country’s economic development

Abstract

Although real GDP is considered a key macroeconomic indicator for a nation’s economic development, various criticisms of its method of measurement and interpretation have been appearing increasingly more often. In the previous century, Simon Kuznets already expressed certain doubts. There are a number of alternative methods and proposals (or additions) to GDP for assessing the current level of societal development. This paper deals with comparing these alternatives. Attention is also devoted to analyzing empirical data concerning the development of real GDP and the Human Development Index (HDI). Data will be compared for the Czech Republic and the other countries that jointly entered the EU together with the Czech Republic in 2004 (the EU-10). The reason for this double comparison is to judge the development of this group of countries through the lens of the double comparison method. From the analysis we conducted, it follows that a country’s economic development judged on the basis of real GDP shows different characteristics than economic development perceived as satisfaction with a fuller quality of human life.