Potential gross domestic product, or potential GDP, is a measurement of what a country's gross domestic product would be if it were operating at full employment and utilizing all of its resources. This amount is generally higher than the actual gross domestic product, or GDP, of a country. As a result, the separation between a country's potential GDP and its real GDP is known as the output gap. The output gap is caused by the fact that most economies suffer from certain inefficiencies, such as inflation, unemployment, and government regulations, which hamper production levels.
One of the major economic factors which helps to measure economic strength is the gross domestic product. The GDP totals up the value of all of the goods produced in a specific country over a certain period of time. Economists watch how the GDP in a specific nation rises and falls, and they also check how it compares to the GDP levels achieved by other nations. It is important to realize where production levels are lacking within a country compared to where they could be, which is where the potential GDP comes into play.
Basically, the potential GDP is what the gross domestic product would look like if all the disparate facets of the economy were working on all cylinders for the time period being studied. This would mean that the full employment force of a country were working at its maximum capacity. It would also mean that resources are being mined and converted into products without any sort of excess waste in the process.
Of course, the potential GDP is just an ideal toward which countries may strive but usually never reach. That is because the necessary circumstances that would cause a country to reach these levels are unlikely to exist all at once. Unemployment is a big cause of countries' failures to reach potential production levels. In addition, general inefficiency, whether caused by government interference or simple business incompetence, can also drag down gross domestic products.
Since there is rarely ever an occasion when a country can reach its potential GDP, economists often study the lag between what a country can produce and what it actually does produce. This is known as the output gap. When the gap grown larger, it means that the country is failing to utilize all the tools it has at its disposal. As a result, economic leaders try to find ways to minimize that gap so that production output can more closely resemble potential levels.