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Who run the world? GDP.

But why? Do we put too much emphasis on GDP when evaluating economic health?

Who run the world? GDP.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Do we put too much emphasis on GDP?

“It is not an objective number of the economy,” says Dirk Philipsen, an economics professor at Duke and the author of “The Little Big Number: How GDP came to rule the world and what to do about it.”

“It it just a number that very subjectively looks at mere output and mere activities in the market.” Philipsen calls the constant attention to GDP, “an irrational obsession.”

Listen to Philipsen’s full conversation with Adriene Hill in the audio player above.

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