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Given this fact, many nations apply a value added tax (VAT) to compensate for losses in revenue that might place labor groups at risk (Keuschnigg, 2007). While the growth of a GNP may be assessed using these methodologies, such growth does not easily lend to predicting future growth. Indeed, the sheer complexity of a nation's GNP may be the mitigating factor, as the wide range of contributors to a GNP makes it difficult to predict future growth as an aggregate. One study, for example, assessed the predictability of future growth of a given GNP based on governmental announcements regarding such growth. The study concluded that such announcements, while reflective of current growth, did little to foment elements that could be used for predicting future growth (Rodriguez & Schulstad, 2007). Although GNP accounts for market based outputs in the determination of productivity, it does not include nonmarket outputs, such as volunteer service. For example, disaster recovery efforts like that which occurred after Hurricane Katrina required the work of thousands of public safety, health care, military, and volunteer personnel, but none of what was performed during this recovery effort contributed to the economy. Indeed, although its ultimate impact was helping New Orleans reinvigorate itself, the work that was done was not technically quantifiable in terms of the nation's economic condition (Cloutier, 2008). In an interesting study of less developed countries (LDCs), the authors offered that that production along the lines of that which is gauged by either gross domestic product (GDP) or GNP is the more applicable approach to studying an individual country's performance. Income, the analysis concluded, is less of an explanatory measure of the output of certain LDCs, while production output, such as those seen from export, appears to be the more relevant aggregation of data on an LDC's economic condition. Indeed, many LDCs are hampered significantly by an inability to even tax income and, as a result, must find alternative tax revenues (Truong & Gash, 1979). Indeed, there is a wide range of complexities to analyzing all aspects of production as the primary determinant of the state of health of a given national economy. While the increasingly global marketplace necessitates a level playing field of data and assessing the GNP may prove to be that leveling mechanism, there are other important factors to consider. Given this fact, many nations apply a value added tax (VAT) to compensate for losses in revenue that might place labor groups at risk (Keuschnigg, 2007). While the growth of a GNP may be assessed using these methodologies, such growth does not easily lend to predicting future growth. Indeed, the sheer complexity of a nation's GNP may be the mitigating factor, as the wide range