gross national product

Gross national product (GNP) is the total value of all the final goods and services made by a nation’s economy in a specific time (usually a year). GNP is different from net national product, which considers depreciation and the consumption of capital.

GNP is similar to gross domestic product (GDP), except that GDP doesn’t include the income made by a nation’s residents from investments abroad. In 1991, the United States started using GDP instead of GNP as its main way to measure economic output. Because GDP omits international income from the total, it allows the fiscal and monetary policy makers to more accurately track total output of goods and services from year to year, as well as compare output among nations.