inequality resource depletion and welfare accounting applications to indonesia and costa rica abstract ahluwalia and chenery noted that the standard measures of gdp growth imply distributional weights that place greater weight on the income of richer income groups and proposed distribution neutral and pro poor alternatives more recently pilot studies by the world resources institute wri have questioned the sustainability of gdp growth and have introduced natural resource modifications to national income accounting to date no studies have undertaken both revisions concurrently creating a revised measure based on gdp but corrected for both distributional bias and resource depletion such a measure is derived in this paper and its impact illustrated with data from indonesia and costa rica the countries studied by the wri

energy consumption and sustainable economic welfare in g7 countries a comparison with the conventional nexus abstract this is an empirical study on the causal relationship between sustainable economic welfare growth and energy consumption for canada france germany italy japan uk and the usa using a multivariate panel framework with variables such as employment capital energy consumption and r d the short and long run relationships are compared with those produced from the commonly known so far energy gdp gross domestic product growth relationship results mainly show that in the long run g7 economies can reduce energy consumption without compromising sustainable economic welfare in the short run though both gdp and economic welfare are very much dependent on energy consumption for their materialization of growth sustainable or not the current paper follows the tendency of new economics that shift their focus therein and propagate the use of sustainable welfare in place of the criticized gdp the calculation of the index for sustainable economic welfare isew reveals that uk closely followed by usa have the largest gap on average 52 and 50 respectively between their gdp and sustainable economic welfare japan is experiencing a steadily widening gap while canada is the most sustainable country among g7

application and use of the isew for assessing the sustainability of a regional system a case study in italy abstract the index of sustainable economic welfare isew was introduced by daly and cobb in 1989 in order to integrate the information embodied in gdp since economic growth implies externalities and market failures and a portion of it can be defined as uneconomic the isew method introduces some corrections and adjustments to the gdp calculation framework the isew has been calculated for a number of nations but it has been rarely applied to sub national systems its calculation at the local level is important especially in case of administrative decentralization and autonomy and responsibility of local authorities in certain fields for this reason a more and more comprehensive knowledge of the characteristics and peculiarities of the territorial system they manage is necessary this paper presents the results of the isew calculation for tuscany a region in central italy in the period 1971 2006 this is one of the few attempts to apply the isew in time series at the regional level final results show that a discrepancy between isew and gdp appeared in the 1970s social and environmental pressures increased during the period under study making the gap equal to about 30 percent of regional gdp in 2006 the isew can be used also as a tool for evaluating policies but further adjustments in calculation of certain items are considered necessary for taking into account and evaluating punctual policies a case of energy policy is presented

dynamic sustainability assessment the case of russia in the period of transition 1985 2008 abstract russia has experienced twenty years of economic and social change which had a substantial impact on the regional and sectoral patterns of the development of its economy infrastructure the quality of the environment and the well being of its people the current economic revival offers new opportunities and presents new challenges for the sustainable development of russia the paper employs the un sustainable development framework of indicators and assesses sustainability of russia using multi criteria evaluation methods namely the uncertainty randomization multi criteria evaluation method analysis and synthesis of parameters under information deficiency aspid the analysis covers economic environmental and social trends in russia s development in 1985 2008 and assesses sustainability of this development from the point of view of multiple criteria the results show the potential of employment of multi criteria methods for the sustainability assessment at the macro level and offer useful insights into multidimensional nature of sustainability and the role of priority setting in the evaluation process such an analysis reveals the degree of harmoniousness of sustainable development policy it shows how different sets of priorities determine the outcome of multidimensional analysis of sustainability and could potentially help in assessing progress and designing new policy instruments this paper is one of the first to apply multi criteria methods to the macro sustainability analysis in the dynamic setting

the index of sustainable economic welfare isew for a local authority a case study in italy abstract the index of sustainable economic welfare isew has been calculated for many countries but rarely at the local level this paper shows how the index has been calculated for the province of siena central italy the whole procedure is illustrated step by step including the search for the most suitable and precise methods to obtain reliable values for each item composing the index application of isew at a very local level was found to be feasible the most general difficulty encountered was the lack of an adequate institutionalised source of statistical information to support the construction of indicators other than purely economic or demographic ones this is mainly due to the still low interest for a sustainable management of natural resources and land on the part of local authorities and the related willingness to invest money and human resources on environmental research the isew gives a more realistic representation of the well being of the population than gdp since it includes environmental and social items not considered in conventional national accounting furthermore in italy the principle of administrative decentralization has been implemented in recent years to such an extent that the central government devolved part of its power to regions provinces and municipalities consequently local authorities are called to allocate more resources to pursue their policies towards sustainability an issue which modern electoral campaigns are often based on the results for the province of siena show that there is a large gap between local gdp and isew about 37 of gdp

biodiversity conservation loss of natural capital and interest rates it is argued that there is neither regular relationship between changes in the level of the market rate of interest and variations in the rate of biodiversity loss nor does such a regular relationship occur between alterations in the market rate of interest and changes in the rate of natural resource extraction however some texts suggest otherwise microeconomic examples are given in which a rise in the market rate of interest results in increased biodiversity loss and others in which it does not it is also posited that the rate of biodiversity loss as well as the rate of natural resource extraction tends to rise with the level of aggregate investment and aggregate economic activity it is demonstrated using macroeconomic models that the market rate of interest can increase or decrease with a rise in aggregate investment and also with an increase in the level of aggregate economic activity therefore changes in biodiversity loss and in the rate of natural resource extraction are independent of variations in the market rate of interest in macroeconomic models

measuring sustainable welfare a new approach to the isew abstract sustainability and welfare assessment is a contemporary theme of major scientific and policy relevance requiring the consideration of multiple dimensions and diverse perspectives the economic approach to sustainability and welfare assessment has frequently relied on alternatives or adjustments to gdp widely used as an indicator of macroeconomic performance several authors have proposed alternative indicators such as the isew which intend to measure sustainability and economic welfare in a way that avoids the limitations of gdp namely accounting for the value of externalities the distribution of income and natural resources depletion since daly and cobb 1989 there have been proposed improvements to the isew however its aptitude to represent a sound alternative to gdp is still the subject of scientific debate this paper presents a new approach to the isew named modified isew including new components and methodological changes for the estimation of the index these have the purpose of avoiding some of the index shortcomings and allow for a direct comparison with the gdp which are advantages over previous studies an application is developed for the us case taking advantage of wide data availability and the possibility of comparing the results with previous works the results obtained provide a clearer picture of the success or failure of environmental and social policies namely by avoiding the tampering effect resulting from the cumulative accounting of environmental externalities this work also emphasizes the inadequacy of gdp as a welfare indicator as well as the need to develop and adopt alternative indicators

barriers and opportunities for alternative measures of economic welfare this paper explores a number of barriers and opportunities facing alternative measures of economic welfare by conducting semi structured in depth interviews with potential users in both belgium and germany the barriers that they identified are grouped into three categories context factors are embedded in the policy context and agendas that shape the environment in which an indicator percolates indicator factors depend on specific characteristics of the indicators while user factors relate to the level of experience and expertise of the users of indicators and the institutional culture in which they operate drawing on the different barriers that are reported we identify four opportunities to increase the policy value of alternative measures of economic welfare harmonizing and updating the methodological framework extending macroeconomic models to include a wider range of welfare related items improving the communication around these indicators and promoting indicator and researcher entrepreneurship these opportunities should be regarded as recommendations to the scientific community that works on these alternative measures the process of overcoming the different barriers listed in this paper should not be insurmountable as there is clear international public support for using health social and environmental statistics as well as economic statistics to measure societal progress and human well being

the index of sustainable economic welfare isew as an alternative to gdp in measuring economic welfare the results of the austrian revised isew calculation 1955 1992 abstract although the inadequacy of gdp to measure economic welfare is widely accepted theoretically it is still used as the key indicator for economic policy this article s aim therefore is to give some empirical evidence to the theoretical critique economic welfare or at least its change over time is estimated by the index of sustainable economic welfare isew which takes account of gdp unpaid household labor social costs environmental damage and income distribution the concept of the isew which was originally developed by herman daly and john cobb is entirely reformulated with special regard to questions of inner consistency and clarity in structure as an illustration the methods of the calculation in the austria case study and its results are presented the main result is that gdp and economic welfare as measured by the isew differ significantly up until the 1970s gdp only slightly overestimated the growth of economic welfare but since then it has been completely misleading while gdp continues to rise sustainable economic welfare has been stagnating since the middle of the 1980s the main causes have been growing future welfare reductions increasing income inequality and a stagnation in the value of unpaid household labor as gdp neglects those aspects it systematically misinterprets economic welfare however the isew does not intend to simply replace gdp as a unique welfare measure but should form part of a more holistic social reporting system

diminishing and negative welfare returns of economic growth an index of sustainable economic welfare isew for thailand thailand has achieved remarkable levels of economic growth over the last three decades this sustained economic growth has played a major role in reducing absolute poverty levels from nearly one third of the population in 1975 to presently less than 10 thus increasing the welfare of many thais this performance ranks thailand as one of the world s most successful economies during this period however an increasing number of studies have begun to find that at a certain point achieving economic growth stops improving welfare and actually begins to diminish it due to the hidden and traditionally unreported costs of associated with this growth with one exception these new studies have focussed on high income countries this study will estimate an index of sustainable economic welfare isew for a developing country thailand over a 25 year period 1975 1999 this paper concludes that even low middle income countries are beginning to approach the point in which economic growth produces both diminishing and at times negative welfare returns as the costs of achieving economic growth begin to outweigh the benefits these results are important for policy makers and highlight the importance of implementing alternative welfare enhancing interventions that must be considered in place of simply achieving economic growth the emphasis of this paper is not on the methodology of estimating the isew for thailand but rather on the policy implications for developing countries of diminishing and negative welfare returns brought about through the achievement of economic growth

well being and or quality of life in eu countries through a multidimensional index of sustainability abstract the aim of my paper is to demonstrate that sen s theory of well being can be applied to make the concept of sustainable human development operational through the building of a multidimensional index of sustainability which takes into account at the same time economic social and environmental variables this index may be considered an alternative to the current measures of welfare sustainability since not only conventional measures such as gdp but also multi attribute indices such as human development index hdi genuine savings index of sustainable economic welfare isew etc are found to be inadequate to make the concept of sustainable development operational therefore the limitations of these measures of welfare sustainability justify the search for a new index of sustainability this index will show at the operational level how sen s theory of well being can be useful to sustainable development it was applied to eu countries using the standardised deviation methodology being the closest and most suitable methodology to be adopted for building multidimensional indices the factor analysis methodology will also be used in my paper lastly the comparison between sen s trend of sustainability and gdp trend index number which are both of them applied to italy will show how much the criticisms and the limitations directed towards the indicator of gdp are founded

the genuine progress indicator methodological developments and results from australia abstract this paper is a contribution to the continuing development of the methods and results for the index of sustainable economic welfare also known as the genuine progress indicator gpi it attempts a more systematic approach to some of the components of the gpi it includes a more careful specification of types of capital and more plausible methods of estimating the costs of depletion of non renewable resources and environmental damage due to ozone depletion in addition the paper attempts a more comprehensive treatment of the value of time including the costs of unemployment and overwork results of the gpi calculations for australia over the period 1950 1996 are presented and analysed

economic openness and green gdp since the early 1990s there have been several attempts to develop national income accounting systems which recognize the negative impacts of environmental degradation and income inequalities on economic welfare collectively these bgreenq gross domestic product gdp studies have generated a wealth of new time series data sets which can be used to reexamine the links between gdp and a host of factors commonly included in traditional economic growth models in this paper we develop models of green gdp growth and the gap between traditional and green gdp by using a panel data set from eight countries spanning 30 50 years in both the growth and gap models the effects of economic openness are tested we find strong and robust results suggesting a negative nonlinear correlation between openness and green gdp growth and a positive nonlinear correlation between openness and growth of the gap between traditional and green gdp while green gdp accounting systems are still in their infancy our paper nonetheless implies that once these more comprehensive measures are fully developed empirical models which explore factors contributing to the growth of economic welfare over time should be reexamined d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

a theoretical foundation to support the index of sustainable economic welfare isew genuine progress indicator gpi and other related indexes abstract for some time now ecological economists have been putting forward a threshold hypothesis the notion that when macroeconomic systems expand beyond a certain size the additional cost of growth exceeds the flow of additional benefits in order to support their belief ecological economists have developed a number of similar indexes to measure and compare the benefits and costs of growth e g the index of sustainable economic welfare isew and the genuine progress indicator gpi in virtually every instance where an index of this type has been calculated for a particular country the movement of the index appears to reinforce the existence of the threshold hypothesis of late a number of observers have cast doubt over the validity of these alternative indexes one of the concerns commonly expressed is the supposed lack of a theoretical foundation to support the isew the gpi and other related indexes by adopting a concept of income and capital outlined by fisher nature of capital and income a m kelly new york 1906 this paper demonstrates that these alternative indexes are theoretically sound but in order to be broadly accepted require the continuous development of more robust valuation methods

inverse productivity or inverse efficiency evidence from mexico abstractusing a unique panel data set from rural mexico we find strong evidence of a negative relationship between farm size and both productivity and technical efficiency large farms not only have a lower value of output per hectare than small farms they also produce further from the efficiency frontier our findings suggest that in spite of the ongoing transformation of agricultural supply chains and economists recommendations for small farmers to exit crop production there may be sustained advantages for smallholder farms our analysis offers new insights into inverse farm size relationship the productivity efficiency relationship and the use of stochastic frontier techniques

an index of sustainable economic welfare isew for chile abstract chile has experienced a period of strong economic growth the gross domestic product gdp has doubled in the past 12 years however income inequality remains relatively the same as in the 1960s the economic growth is primarily attributed to the exports of natural resources which accounts for 80 of total exports however the gdp fails to account for the loss of natural capital and non marketed services the objective of this paper is to more clearly indicate the status of the chilean economy in terms of welfare using the index of sustainable economic welfare isew designed by daly and cobb 1989 the isew provides corrections to the gdp that includes income inequalities household labor and damage to natural capital this index has been applied in several case studies for developed countries in general the results show that isew runs parallel with gdp until the 1970s when a decline in welfare occurs due to a loss in natural capital this study is the first attempt to utilize the isew for the purpose of analyzing whether or not similar trends exist for chile a developing country the isew for chile grew at a much slower annual rate over the past 30 years compared with gdp 0 16 vs 2 9 the chilean isew parallels the gdp until the 1980s a decline in the isew then occurs showing that chile is not on a sustainable path and that there is a strong link between economic growth and the depletion of natural resources

consumption sustainable welfare and human needs with reference to uk expenditure patterns between 1954 and 1994 abstract this paper explores the complex relationship between economic consumption and human welfare or well being conventional economics suggests that increasing levels of economic consumption lead to increasing levels of well being however this view has been criticised on both environmental and social grounds on the one hand the material impacts of increasing consumption are environmentally unsustainable on the other hand material consumption can conflict with crucial social and psychological components of human welfare this paper develops a perspective on human welfare which is based on max neef s characterisation of human needs it discusses the implications of this alternative perspective for the conventional viewpoint and illustrates the importance of it with reference to patterns of consumer expenditure in the uk over the last 40 years the authors suggest that from this perspective modern societies may be seriously adrift in their pursuit of human well being however they also point out that addressing this situation provides far more opportunity for ecologically sustainable development than is generally recognised

agrobiodiversity conservation under an imperfect seed system the role of community seed banking schemes the study is an empirical investigation of agrobiodiversity conservation decisions of small farmers in the central highlands of ethiopia the primary objective is to measure the effectiveness of community seed banking csb in enhancing diversity while providing productivity incentives our results indicate a significant impact of participation in csb on farm level agrobiodiversity however the level of biodiversity conservation was not found to have the expected reinforcing impact on participation indicating no support for simultaneity csb participation also led to an increase in productivity consistent with a need for such incentives in order to enhance diversity at a farm level our assessment of the performance of the gls estimator yielded a significant discrepancy between the gls and bootstrap estimates this led to the conclusion that bootstrapping asymptotic estimations might be required for appropriate inference

the economic costs and benefits of a participatory project to conserve maize landraces on farms in oaxaca mexico conventional methods were used to assess the benefits and costs of an unconventional project whose purpose was to test whether participatory crop improvement can encourage mexican farmers to continue growing maize landraces by enhancing their current use value findings suggest that farmers as a group earned a high benefit cost ratio from participating though from the perspective of the private investor the returns were low the project also generated social benefits but these would be difficult and costly to measure there was a gender bias in both participation and benefits distributions though there is some evidence of a welfare transfer to maize deficit households application of other valuation approaches will be necessary in order to assess both the private and social benefits of similar projects

the end of economic growth a contracting threshold hypothesis this paper argues that gdp growth in both developed and developing countries has associated costs that can outweigh the benefits and thus reduce sustainable well being this conclusion is based upon the findings of empirical applications of the genuine progress indicator gpi to a range of countries in the asia pacific region the studies conducted on seven asia pacific countries indicate that in the case of five of the seven nations more recent gdp growth has reduced the sustainable well being experienced by the average citizen residing within them moreover the threshold point at which the costs of gdp growth outweigh the benefits appears to be contracting i e occurring at a much lower per capita level of gdp this paper therefore introduces a new contracting threshold hypothesis as the economies of the asia pacific region and the world collectively expand in a globalised economic environment there is a contraction over time in the threshold level of per capita gdp as a consequence the threshold point confronting growth late comers i e developing countries occurs at a much lower level of sustainable welfare than what wealthy nations currently enjoy the consequences of this for developing countries are clearly significant and require a new approach to economic development

globalisation and sustainability environmental kuznets curve and the wto abstract economic globalisation is seen by many as a driving force for global economic growth yet opinion is divided about the benefits of this process as highlighted by the wto meeting in seattle in late 1999 proponents of economic globalisation view it as a positive force for environmental improvement and as a major factor increasing the likelihood of sustainable development through its likely boost to global investment these proponents mostly appeal to analysis based on the environmental kuznets curve ekc to support their views about environmental improvement but ekc analysis has significant deficiencies furthermore it is impossible to be confident that the process of economic globalisation will result in sustainable development if weak conditions only are satisfied strong conditions probably need to be satisfied to achieve sustainable development and given current global institutional arrangements these are likely to be violated by the economic globalisation process global political action seems to be needed to avert a deterioration in the global environment and to prevent unsustainability of development this exposition demonstrates the limitations of ekc analysis identifies positive and negative effects of economic globalisation on pollution levels and highlights connections between globalisation and the debate about whether strong or weak conditions are required for sustainable development the article concludes with a short discussion of the position of wto in relation to trade and the environment and the seemingly de facto endorsement of wto of weak conditions for sustainable development it suggests that wto s relative neglect of environmental concerns is no longer politically tenable and needs to be reassessed in the light of recent developments in economic analysis the skew of economic growth e g in favour of developing countries is shown to be extremely important from a global environmental perspective

reconsidering monetary policy an empirical examination of the relationship between interest rates and nominal gdp growth in the u s u k germany and japan abstract the rate of interest the price of money is said to be a key policy tool economics has in general emphasised prices this theoretical bias results from the axiomatic deductive methodology centring on equilibrium without equilibrium quantity constraints are more important than prices in determining market outcomes in disequilibrium interest rates should be far less useful as policy variable and economics should be more concerned with quantities including resource constraints to investigate we test the received belief that lower interest rates result in higher growth and higher rates result in lower growth examining the relationship between 3 month and 10 year benchmark rates and nominal gdp growth over half a century in four of the five largest economies we find that interest rates follow gdp growth and are consistently positively correlated with growth if policy makers really aimed at setting rates consistent with a recovery they would need to raise them we conclude that conventional monetary policy as operated by central banks for the past half century is fundamentally flawed policy makers had better focus on the quantity variables that cause growth

sustainability of nations by indices comparative study between environmental sustainability index ecological footprint and the emergy performance indices abstract the present work makes a comparison between the two most used environmental sustainability indices of nations ecological footprint and environmental sustainability index with two emergy ratios renewability and emergy sustainability index all of them are gaining space within the scientific community and government officials despite the efforts for obtaining an index that adequately represents the sustainability of a region according to the result of this research nowadays there is not yet a completely satisfactory index we consider that all of them need to be improved but the results point out the possibility of obtaining one better index of sustainability through the junction of ecological footprint with renewability emergy index

beyond gdp measuring and achieving global genuine progress article i nfo while global gross domestic product gdp has increased more than three fold since 1950 economic wel fare as estimated by the genuine progress indicator gpi has actually decreased since 1978 we synthesized estimates of gpi over the 1950 2003 time period for 17 countries for which gpi has been estimated these 17 countries contain 53 of the global population and 59 of the global gdp we compared gpi with gross domestic product gdp human development index hdi ecological footprint biocapacity gini coefficient and life satisfaction scores results show a significant variation among these countries but some major trends we also estimated a global gpi capita over the 1950 2003 period global gpi capita peaked in 1978 about the same time that global ecological footprint exceeded global biocapacity life satisfaction in almost all countries has also not improved significantly since 1975 globally gpi capita does not increase beyond a gdp capita of around 7000 capita if we distributed income more equitably around the planet the current world gdp 67 trillion yr could support 9 6 billion people at 7000 capita while gpi is not the perfect economic welfare indicator it is a far better approximation than gdp development policies need to shift to better account for real welfare and not merely gdp growth

how countries resource use history matters for human well being an investigation of global patterns in cumulative material flows from 1950 to 2010 abstract global resource use has been expanding rapidly after 1950 and improved material living conditions and human well being of large parts of the global population we here apply a cumulative long term perspective to gain broader insights into the material requirements of human well being the role of trade and the history of environmental pressures than the usual perspective of annual or most recent flows would reveal furthermore we investigate environmental pressures expressed as cumulative extraction per area over the last 60 years to both ends we utilize cumulative data on material flows on domestic material inputs dmi and domestic extraction de for 148 countries from 1950 to 2010 and the social progress index we find that a high level of well being required at least 460 t cap of cumulative material inputs from 1950 to 2010 an analysis of the relation between cumulative flows and current human well being shows statistically significant that at similar levels of cumulative material inputs biophysical export orientation of a country has a weak negative influence on well being when the sustainable development goals are to be achieved the scientific community and policy makers have to consider the history of development of resource use to better understand the future challenges ahead

a conceptual exploration and critical inquiry into the theoretical foundation s of economic welfare measures abstract economic welfare measures ewm such as the isew and the gpi are often argued to lack a sound theoretical foundation however we observe that the initial ewm were jointly inspired by hicksian and fisherian income welfare s experiential nature is fisherian inspired whereas seeing the consumption of community capital e g the ecosystem as a cost is hicksian inspired as most scholars do not recognize this double theoretical foundation two distinct welfare interpretations with different time and boundary dimensions are often conflated ewm can be seen as either capturing the benefits and costs experienced or as reflecting the benefits and costs of present economic activities bcpa the former interpretation excludes future costs costs shifted abroad and capital changes as they are not experienced in the present while the latter includes them recent developments reveal that ewm are converging toward the ex post established experiential fisherian foundation formulated by lawn 2003 yet this is not the only way forward as the bcpa view offers an alternative to account for for instance the costs of present activities shifted abroad or to the future whether they are experienced or not to avoid inconsistencies ewm s standardization would greatly benefit from making explicit in future studies which interpretation is taken

agricultural price policy employment and migration in a diversified rural economy a village town cge analysis from mexico using the village town computable general equilibrium cge model this paper explores the implications of resource mobility across farm and non farm activities and alternative model closure rules in shaping agricultural policy impacts two sets of agricultural policy experiments on three alternative model closure scenarios were conducted using data from a 1993 survey of 196 households in michoacan mexico including 53 in a town or county seat and 143 in the surrounding villages experiment 1 simulates the village town economy wide impact of a 10 decrease in the support price for staples experiment 2 combines this support price decrease with a compensating lump sum income transfer to staple producers similar to what actually occurred under mexicos procampo program results show that the prediction made by the aggregate cge model that mexicos agricultural price liberalization reduces rural employment and incomes and stimulates migration was not materialized the decline in staple production has been relatively small and it has concentrated on large commercial farms rather than in small farm sector in which most producers are found and from which most migrants originate however with the use of village town model and microsurvey data the authors demonstrated that under plausible market closure conditions mexicos staple price liberalization has a minimal effect on rural wagers and migration this is contrary to the predictions of the aggregated cge model

developing approaches to measuring and monitoring sustainable development in wales a review munday m and roberts a 2006 developing approaches to measuring and monitoring sustainable development in wales a review regional studies 40 534 535 under the 1998 government of wales act the welsh assembly government committed to the promotion of sustainable development in the exercise of its functions the paper examines a selection of approaches that are being explored in wales to monitor and measure progress towards sustainable development objectives these approaches are the ecological footprint the index of sustainable economic welfare the environmental satellite account and environmental input output tables the paper shows that in wales there are problems with each of the approaches outlined but that development of an environmental satellite account could be useful with this approach linked to the other approaches reviewed and with the satellite account enabling environmental factors to be connected more readily to conventional regional accounting aggregates the findings are expecte

a summary of isew and gpi studies at multiple scales and new estimates for baltimore city baltimore county and the state of maryland this paper 1 summarizes a number of previous index of sustainable economic welfare isew and genuine progress indicator gpi studies at various scales 2 estimates the gpi for baltimore baltimore county and the state of maryland and 3 compares these results with previous and parallel studies gpi incorporates environmental social and economic information into a single metric to represent economic well being at all three scales gpi was found to grow at a slower rate than the conventional economic measure of gross domestic product gdp while at the us national scale gpi has been relatively flat since 1975 state level results match an independently calculated maryland gpi confirming that gpi methods are robust and reproducible in addition the state of maryland has recently made gpi one of their official state statistics reported annually state level gpi results were also compared with studies for the states of ohio and vermont to explore regional differences we recommend that the gpi research community develop consensus on a standardized measurement approach and seek common ground for advancing the use of improved indicators and accounting systems in official policy settings

economic growth quality environmental sustainability and social welfare in china provincial assessment based on genuine progress indicator gpi abstract in order to devise scientific and sustainable development strategy it is vital to assess the quality of economic growth as a useful complement to traditional economic indicators gpi s most reputed virtue is its great improvement in evaluating environmental and social costs in this paper we estimate the gpi for all 31 provinces in mainland china from 1997 to 2016 gpi estimation is highly sensitive to income inequality climate change damage and depletion of non renewables we address contestable methodological assumptions associated with the three items which have been usually ignored in empirical studies we use the atkinson index in place of the gini index as a measure of income inequality we avoid the problematic duplicated counting of climate change damage and the unjustified cost escalation factor in depletion of non renewables our results show that first gpi per capita has recently declined in some provinces unveiling a threat to social welfare and sustainability second the relative threshold effect the progress of social welfare promotion is slower than the expansion of economic scale has been found in many provinces third resource consumption and environmental pollution especially water pollution and carbon emissions would generate substantial welfare losses

technology production environment and household income assessing the regional impacts of technological change abstract this paper clarifies the factors determining the welfare effects of improved agricultural technologies when technology diffusion is unevenly distributed across production environments household level income effects are shown to depend primarily on a whether the economy is open or closed with respect to world markets b whether households are net consumers or net producers of the commodity for which technological change occurs c whether households are adopters or non adopters of the new technology d the degree to which labor is mobile across agricultural regions and e government intervention in commodity and or factor markets a review of recent empirical work indicates considerable variation in the relative strength of these various factors across countries and that assumptions regarding the mechanism by which commodity prices are determined endogenously as in a closed economy or exogenously as in an open economy is especially critical

dynamic multidimensional assessment of sustainability at the macro level the case of austria abstract this paper explores the issue of sustainability at the macro scale employing multi criteria decision aid mcda methods the incommensurability of values and the essentially multi dimensional and dynamic nature of sustainability challenge the use of composite measurement indices this determined the choice of mcda methods austria was chosen as a case study due to the wide availability of data especially on indicators of strong sustainability the structure of the multi criteria problem comprised the evolution of different sustainability dimensions over time the process for selecting criteria included a critical assessment of institutional sustainability agendas un eu and austrian government and theoretical recommendations after an assessment of mcda methods the naiade method demonstrated the most suitable properties for sustainability assessment the application of this outranking approach was undertaken in three separate settings long term from 1960 to 2003 medium term 1970 1995 and short term 1995 2003 with varying numbers of criteria the response of results to the addition of evaluating criteria and periods was tested the degree of credibility for accepting preference relations was also employed for sensitivity analysis according to the results of long term and medium term assessments especially in the weak sustainability setting sustainable progress is taking place in austria in the short term in the stronger sustainability setting and especially as the number of criteria increases more incomparable periods appear and trends are less determined moreover it is shown how results crucially depend on the methodological choices this is one of the first applications of the multi criteria tools to the dynamic analysis of sustainability at the macro scale

on the methodology of isew gpi and related measures some constructive suggestions and some doubt on the threshold hypothesis existing country studies of the index of sustainable economic welfare isew the genuine progress indicator gpi and related measures while sharing the same basic methodological approach differ with respect to the valuation of important items this paper provides a critical but constructive discussion of the various methods used for the valuation of non renewable resource depletion and long term environmental damage and for the weighting of consumption expenditures for income inequalities several recommendations are given on how to improve the methodology for future updates of existing studies or for the construction of new measures sensitivity analysis shows that if these recommendations are followed for the valuation of resource depletion and long term environmental damage then the so called threshold hypothesis which seems to have gained empirical support from all studies undertaken so far fails to materialise this suggests that as far as factors related to the environment are concerned the widening gap between isew and gpi on the one hand and gross national product gnp on the other might be an artefact of highly contestable methodological assumptions 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved