Valuing Volunteering – An Economist’s Perspective

The Conference Board of Canada is in the business of forecasting the economy. We produce detailed forecasts of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employment, income, consumption and more of Canada and its regions. These forecasts are used by businesses and governments for planning or comparison to their own forecasts. So as an economist, my work tends to be all about measurable economic activity—all in dollars and cents, or rather, in millions and billions of dollars. This focus on output, income and other measures sometimes gives economists a bad rap—we get criticized for excluding from our analysis what is not measured in […]

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