GDP-B: A New Well-Being Metric in the Era of the Digital Economy

Gross Domestic Product (GDP), though often used as a proxy for economic well-being, was not designed for this purpose and is inadequate. In our current research, we are building new metrics for measuring changes in consumer well-being that captures the value of currently unmeasured (often free) digital goods and services. By conducting hundreds of thousands of online surveys, we seek to build an index of digital goods and traditional goods such that we can develop a complement to GDP. With a full measure of economic output, our GDP-B Index will enable better management of our economy.