[thanatropism]

Level 0: GDP is a flow, market value is a stock. Market value is a distance reached, GDP is a velocity.

Level 1: GDP is gross domestic product. It's not adjusted down for depreciation in order to be the Net domestic product. The proverbial Chaplinian window-breaker who sells windows adds to GDP, but not to NDP.

Integrating the net domestic product over time would get you something like the accumulated wealth of a country.

Level 2: There's a differentiation between the gross domestic product and the gross national product. GDP means within-borders; this includes for example the income of migrant workers who remit cash to their families abroad. GNP means by-national-citizens (and companies); many American companies have operations abroad, for example.

Level 3: Integrating a company's (discounted expected) net revenue will give you its market value, roughishly. But what constitutes a country's net revenue is murkier. It would seem that countries who are net importers are in the red, but imported goods generates consumer welfare that's not easily accounted for. To the extend a national economy can even have goals (it cannot), it isn't to maximize net exports.

It goes on.

[87tau]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not an expert in economics and also not sure how much wikipedia is to be trusted, but going by definition: "IMF publication states that "GDP measures the monetary value of final goods and services—that are bought by the final user—produced in a country in a given period of time (say a quarter or a year)", GDP is an aggregate over a time period, more like distance and not similar to velocity. GNP though is interesting, I hadn't heard of it before, I will explore it further.

[thanatropism]

Yes, but this is an artifact of discrete time.

In discrete time increments, your running velocity is an aggregate of how much you walked over an hour. Or something.