About the series

About the author

Title page

Copyright

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction | The world’s most powerful number

What is GDP?

The politics of GDP

GDP and its critics

Chapter 1 | The history of GDP: from crisis to crisis

Numbers and politics: the pre-history of GDP

GDP as a ‘war machine’

Manipulation and the ‘stats war’

Globalization of national income and the global economic crisis

The greatest invention of the twentieth century?

Chapter 2 | The Frankenstein syndrome

Taming the monster

Figure 2.1 GDP growth in the USA

GDP versus society and the environment

Figure 2.2 Global GDP growth financed by spending down the world’s natural wealth

What makes life worthwhile

Chapter 3 | The global quest to dethrone GDP

Improving or replacing GDP? The search for alternative indicators

Public institutions rethinking GDP?

Resistance to change

GDP strikes back

Poisonous beer

Chapter 4 | Change from below

In transition to a ‘degrowth’ society

Rethinking money

The sandwich model

Conclusion | Supremacy and resistance

Notes

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index