Gross domestic product, the total value of goods and services produced within the United States minus the value of goods and services, or inputs, used in production, can be measured three different ways: 1) expenditures approach, 2) income approach, and 3) production approach.
The most well-known method for computing GDP is the expenditures approach, the sum of all domestically produced goods and services sold to final users1. This approach uses the formula found in economic textbooks “C+I+G+X-M” to calculate GDP: