Ask HN: How to evaluate a country's economic performance?

[kostarelo]

What would be the right indexes (or anything else) to evaluate a country's performance over a specific time period?

I would like to evaluate my country's (Greece) last government performance and what real effect it had over the country's wealth and the general population.

That is only for personal knowledge purposes and not for a professional/academic inquiry or something.

Thank you

[yuppie_scum]

GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is the headline metric.

There must be many books on this subject, I’m pretty sure I learned that in one of my intro level college Economics classes (Econ minor)

I would pull out a macroeconomics and and microeconomics book from the library and study up. Maybe grab a Udemy course on Econ as well.

[kostarelo]

I'm thinking that GDP is best used for longer term periods and not for a goverments' short term term, 4-10 years. For example, a goverement could be recklessly spending money that could have an effect on GDP but that doesn't show the whole picture.

Regardless, GDP is always useful so def one of the right metrics for economic performance in general.

Def I need more studying on the subject my self.

[pestatije]

id say this[4] is a fair account, despite the economist's known unfriendliness towards greece.

[4] https://archive.md/M6tUb - The Economist - Greece is a European success story

[beardyw]

The question you are asking is almost "what is economics?"

[kostarelo]

Yeah I get that, I was looking for personal subjunctive opinions.