Economic growth is the increase in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy over time. It is conventionally measured as the percent rate of increase in real gross domestic product, or real GDP, usually in per capita terms. The "rate of economic growth" refers to the geometric annual rate of growth in GDP between the first and the last year over a period of time. Implicitly, this growth rate is the trend in the average level of GDP over the period, which implicitly ignores the fluctuations in the GDP around this trend.