What's In That Bigger Pie?

As usual, we regret our inability to provide an adequate economic profile of the Empire of the Star, due to the Exchequer’s ongoing decision to not publish detailed economic statistics suitable for external use, continuing to cite former Chancellor Valéran Quendocius-ith-Lirendocius’s comment that “Publishing such things only encourages damn fools to think they ought to do something about them, and no good’s ever come of that.”

Back-calculation from such internal statistics as are available, such as total collections by the Office of the Imperial Revenue and trade statistics provided by major Imperial trade partners, suggests a gross domestic product of the order of 24.4 quintillion esteyn (317.2 quintillion Accord exvals at current exchange rates); equivalent to a per capita GDP of the order of 9.5 million esteyn (123.8 million exvals).

These figures are highly disputed and subject to error.  In-house and external economists disagree widely on attributive weights, and appropriate means to model factors including but not limited to the sizes and effects elsewhere of the agalmic, prestative, and reputation economies; the proper attribution of value to and the values of externalities positive and negative, household production, and ecosystem services; the Exchequer’s method of computing ongoing net costs of permanent resource consumption; and the effects of post-scarcity production methods on total factor productivity.  Investors are cautioned that such considerations should lead the estimated figures given to be taken as a minimum baseline for comparison; fair-baseline adjusted comparative figures could vary up to 1,000% on the upside, depending upon model selected.

– Investor Watch: State of the Markets, First Exval Bank of Meridian