http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/27/the-misuse-and-meaning-of-gdp-the-main-gauge-of-economic-growth.html
On Friday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released their estimates for the first quarter of 2013 and it seems that the US has outperformed previous estimates and is growing at an annualized rate of 2.5% which is much higher than previous periods.
This is relevant given the findings of a graduate researcher who recently disproved the results of research carried out by two renowned economists Carmen Reinhardt and Kenneth Rogoff. The renowned economists proved through their research that economies with debt exceeding 90% of their GDP experienced slower growth than their peers. This research was disproved when research done by a graduate student as homework showed that their methods were flawed with missing data and inaccurate results.
The article above also goes on to mention discussions carried on by the Bureau of Economic Analysis to expand the definition of investment spending. The expanded definition would include money spent on research and development and other things formerly accounted for as business expenditures. This prediction would expand US gdp estimates and would in some ways improve the accuracy of such calculations.
The ideas from this article go to show that GDP is an important estimate that can be used an misused. However, it is just an estimate and is usually not a very accurate measure of real economic activity (it does not include underground/ illegal business activities that might be a huge sector of the economy) but is the best estimate we have.
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