Economic Output

Every land province's GDP is built from two parts:

GDP per resident = productivity × economic output

and its GDP is that times its population. Productivity is what each resident would produce with nothing in the way. Economic Output is the share of that potential being realized at the moment, starting at 100%.

Separating the two lets the game tell the difference between a poor economy and a disrupted one. A province hit by a general strike has not become poorer in any lasting sense; it simply cannot produce at full capacity until the strike ends.

Productivity

Productivity is hidden and is what grows each month (see Provincial Economy). It decides:

• the province's level of development, and so the catch-up bonus or diminishing returns it gets;
• the growth its people expect, which drives Unrest;
• how fast it urbanizes;
• which political parties it leans towards.

Because these all follow productivity, a temporary loss of output does not register as a recession in the eyes of the province's people, and a recovery does not register as a boom.

What changes output

Economic Output is 100% plus the sum of its modifiers, and never falls below zero. Every source is an ordinary Economic Output modifier:

Examples of local modifiers include strike committees and wildcat strikes (a few percent), a general strike (-12%), partisan sabotage of the railways (-10%) and, on the positive side, postwar reconstruction works (+8%), which foreign reconstruction aid can bring to a war-damaged region. A country under the Occupied State form of government, such as a defeated power administered by the victors, also loses 25% of output in every province.

The national modifiers for war exhaustion and blockade are refreshed each month; unrest and devastation apply live.

Why it matters

Economic output is the economy as it actually is. Everything that reads GDP reads it after output is applied:

• country GDP, GDP per capita and the world rankings;
• the Map Modes;
• the tax base and every budget line that is a share of GDP (see Money & the Budget);
• arms procurement, which is a share of GDP.

So a blackout or an uprising shows up as lost GDP and lost revenue immediately, and its end restores both immediately. A country fighting on its own soil, or one whose provinces are in turmoil, sees its revenue fall in step.

Output and productivity together

Some disruptions hit both. Devastation lowers output directly and also slows productivity growth for as long as it lasts, so a wrecked province is both producing less now and falling behind for later. Unrest likewise lowers output now, while the missed growth that often causes it reflects slow productivity.

The province view's Economy tab shows GDP and its breakdown; the tooltip lists each output modifier and its source.

Related articles

• Provincial Economy: productivity growth and development.
• Devastation: war damage and recovery.
• Unrest: how discontent builds and settles.
• War Exhaustion: the national toll of fighting.