GDP: here today, (maybe) gone tomorrow - A study of the impact of increased flows of services and goods on Swedish GDP

This thesis investigates if GDP as a measurement still is useful to explain the economy as new trade flows and new goods and services appear on the market. This is done by estimating the impact of merchanting, processing and royalties and licenses on Swedish GDP. The estimates used are the imports and exports of these goods and services and their share of GDP growth as well as how much these economic activities have increased in volume. The time period investigated ranges from 1994–2016 with different starting time due to availability of the data. The results are that merchanting contributes on average to GDP with one percent meanwhile royalties and licenses all contribute to Swedish GDP with less than one percent per year on average. For all three goods and services the volume increase is between fifteen to twenty-two times compared from the starting year. The study concludes that GDP is still the best indicator to measure economic activity but that there will be a need in the future for a revised measurement. (Less)