Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or Gross Output (GO): Measuring the "Use" Economy or the "Make" Economy

What is Gross Output? It is an attempt to measure total sales volume at all stages of production, what we might call the "make" economy. Most importantly, it includes all business-to-business (B2B) transactions that GDP leaves out. In the third quarter of 2014, GO hit $31.3 trillion, almost twice the size of GDP, which was $17.6 trillion.

GDP is the standard yardstick for measuring the value of final goods and services purchased by consumers, businesses, and government in a year, what we call the "use" economy. While GDP measures the "use" economy, now with GO we have a way to measure the "make" economy every quarter too. Finally, we have a full picture of the economy.

--Mark Skousen, introduction to the new revised edition of The Structure of Production, new rev. ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2015), Kobo e-book.