About the Book: Mis-Measuring Our Lives
Amid the looming global financial crisis in February 2008, President Nicolas
Sarkozy of France asked Nobel Prize–winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and
Amartya Sen, along with the distinguished French economist Jean Paul Fitoussi,
to establish a commission of leading economists to study whether Gross Domestic
Product (GDP)-the most widely used measure of economic activity-is a reliable
indicator of economic and social progress. Mismeasuring Our Lives is the result
of this major intellectual effort, containing pressing relevance for anyone
engaged in assessing how and whether our economy is serving the needs of our
society. The authors offer a sweeping assessment of GDP's limitations as