Gross domestic product (GDP) is one of the world's most influential and widely cited economic indicators. However, outside of the industrialised, market-based context in which the indicator was first designed, GDP measurement suffers from a number of biases and blind spots. The article zooms in on one of these: the exclusion of unpaid household services from the production boundary of the System of National Accounts, the international standard underpinning GDP methodology. While GDP has expanded over time to include activities as diverse as financial services and the informal sector, the treatment of unpaid household services has remained unchanged. Why is this? I find that staff in the statistical departments of international organisations such the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and World Bank have a tremendous degree of agency in the governance of GDP. While these statisticians are aware of and engage with criticisms, they reject the inclusion of unpaid household services based on shared professional norms and economic ideas.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP), one of the world's most influential economic indicators, did not become truly global until it was implemented by China. China officially adopted GDP as an indicator of economic performance in 1993 when the country abandoned its Marxist-inspired national accounting system and joined the internationally harmonized System of National Accounts. As such, it was the last major country to begin producing GDP figures according to international standards. Since then, GDP has become deeply ingrained in China's economic governance. Yet, the adoption of GDP was complicated by mismatches between the ideology guiding China's reform process and the economic ideas underpinning international statistical standards. The Chinese government's translation of the standards into the domestic political-economic context lasted nearly a decade. This process was not foisted upon China from the outside, but rather was driven by domestic factors in an experimental fashion. This is best characterized as an atypical case of diffusion and an unsuccessful case of translation. It makes clear that macroeconomic measurement is inherently political, not a set of neutral 'best practices'. The findings also point to the characteristics of the diffusion object as an underexplored but important factor that can undermine domestic attempts to translate or localize global policy ideas.
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