GDP-B - Accounting for the Value of New and Free Goods in the Digital Economy

Published by Reblogs - Credits in Posts,



Skip to main content

GDP-B: Accounting for the Value of New and Free Goods in the Digital Economy

Working Paper 25695
DOI 10.3386/w25695
Issue Date March 2019

The welfare contributions of the digital economy, characterized by the proliferation of new and free goods, are not well-measured in our current national accounts. We derive explicit terms for the welfare contributions of these goods and introduce a new metric, GDP-B which quantifies their benefits, rather than costs. We apply this framework to several empirical examples including Facebook and smartphone cameras and estimate their valuations through incentive compatible choice experiments. For example, including the welfare gains from Facebook would have added between 0.05 and 0.11 percentage points to GDP-B growth per year in the US.

More from NBER

In addition to working papers, the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals — the NBER Reporter, the NBER Digest, the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability, the Bulletin on Health, and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship — as well as online conference reports, video lectures, and interviews.

  • Lecture
Gita Gopinath, the first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, delivered the 2022 Martin...
  • Lecture
Large data sets that include observations on many workers at a given firm, multiple decisions by individual judges,...
  • Article
Former NBER research associate Ben Bernanke, current research associate Douglas Diamond, and Philip Dybvig have been awarded the 2022 Nobel Memorial...
Follow
National Bureau of Economic Research
Contact Us
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-868-3900
info@nber.org
webaccessibility@nber.org
© 2023 National Bureau of Economic Research. All Rights Reserved.