Smithian National Product and the Wealth of African Nations

Abstract . Given the contemporary interest in growth, conventional measures of economic growth (changes in real GDP or real GDP per capita) may be less preferable than a measure that is more plutological by design. The plutological measure presented in this paper is that of Adam Smith (1776 ). While Smith's work pre‐dated formal national income accounting, there was a macroeconomic accounting scheme implicit in his theorizing on economic growth. This study articulates Adam Smith's concept of national product (referred to as Smithian national product, or SNP). It uses current output data to compute SNP for a set of six African countries, and examines the growth experience of these countries when using SNP as opposed to the more conventional GDP measure.