AIM Framework glossary
GDPA, GDPI, GDPM
Canonical definition
GDPA, GDPI, and GDPM are aggregate measures decomposing total economic activity into the share predominantly driven by appetitive motives (A), intrinsic motives (I), and mimetic motives (M), obtained by aggregating good-level Price Shares across the economy, expenditure-weighted. The aggregation runs on the Price Shares rather than on the good-level AIM indices because GDP is a money total: what is being partitioned is expenditure, and sA, sI and sM are defined on the transaction. The good-level AIM index is the buyer-side companion measure, and approximates the shares only where a good's source-specific utilities are equal.
Explanation
Instead of treating GDP as one big number, AIM splits it into three streams: how much production mainly serves bodily and safety needs, how much mainly supports intrinsically valuable activity, and how much mainly fuels status games. This decomposition makes it possible to say, for example, that a country’s extra growth went mostly into M-heavy sectors rather than improving basic security or meaningful opportunities.
Epistemic status
Theoretical Construct (Latent Variable).