Gross National Product - GNP

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-09-27 10:01

An economic statistic that includes GDP, plus any income earned by residents from overseas investments, minus income earned within the domestic economy by overseas residents.

GNP is a measure of a country's economic performance, or what its citizens produced (i.e. goods and services) and whether they produced these items within its borders.

GNP and GDP tend to be used as synonyms, although GDP is definitely the preferred measure among economists and is gaining popularity in general conversation as well; the two measures are fairly close numerically.

The difference is that GDP measures all production within a country's borders, by whoever happens to be working here; GNP measures the production of all citizens of a country, wherever they happen to be working. (Maybe you can remember the "N" in GNP stands for "anywhere").


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