gender differences in trust and reciprocity evidence from a large scale experiment with heterogeneous subjects this article examines gender differences in an experimental trust game recent studies have shown that men trust more and that women are more reciprocal in laboratory experiments participants in these studies however are typically university students who may not be representative of the entire population in this study we use data from a large scale experiment with heterogeneous subjects who are representative of the german population we find that men exhibit not only more trusting behaviour but also more reciprocating behaviour than women moreover our results are indicative of age dependent gender differences for men we find an inverse u shaped relationship between age on the one hand and both trust and reciprocity on the other however we do not find age effects for women

incorporating model uncertainty in cost effectiveness analysis a bayesian model averaging approach recently several authors have proposed the use of linear regression models in cost effectiveness analysis in this paper by modelling costs and outcomes using patient and health centre covariates we seek to identify the part of the cost or outcome difference that is not attributable to the treatment itself but to the patients condition or to characteristics of the centres selection of the covariates to be included as predictors of effectiveness and cost is usually assumed by the researcher this behaviour ignores the uncertainty associated with model selection and leads to underestimation of the uncertainty about quantities of interest we propose the use of bayesian model averaging as a mechanism to account for such uncertainty about the model data from a clinical trial are used to analyze the effect of incorporating model uncertainty by comparing two highly active antiretroviral treatments applied to asymptomatic hiv patients the joint posterior density of incremental effectiveness and cost and cost effectiveness acceptability curves are proposed as decision making measures

optimal healthcare decisions the importance of the covariates in cost effectiveness analysis abstract this paper deals with the decision problem of choosing an optimal medical treatment among m possible candidates when the states of nature are the net benefit of the treatments and regression models for the treatment cost and effectiveness are assumed in this setting a crucial step in the analysis is the construction of the population subgroups sharing characteristics specified by the covariates so that optimal decisions are now not for the whole population of patients but for patient population subgroups we argue that the existing formulations of population subgroups in the literature are too rigid and unrealistic for real applications and instead we formulate the population subgroups on the base of selected influential covariates the bayesian variable selector we use is an optimal one under the 0 1 loss function which means choosing the subset of covariates having the highest posterior probabilities based on the so called intrinsic priors an objective bayesian tool that exhibits an excellent performance for each population subgroup we study the optimal bayesian decisions for two different utility functions one optimal decision is that obtained maximizing the expected net benefit and the other maximizing the expected number of times that the treatment having the highest net benefit is chosen illustrations of the procedure for real data show that the subset of influential covariates may vary across treatments subgroup optimal treatments are derived and compared with those given by preceding methods

some macroeconomics for the 21st century this note describes a numerical simulation of a model of economic growth a simplified version of robert tamura s 1996 model of world income dynamics based on technology diffusion the model makes predictions for trends in average world income growth and about the evolution of the relative income distribution that accord well with observation the model is used to forecast the course of world income growth and income inequality over the century to come

measurement of social well being alternatives to gross domestic product abstract gross domestic product gdp is widely acknowledged to be a poor measure of social well being this paper surveys several substitutes for and modifications of gdp which have been offered as measures of society s welfare the index of sustainable economic welfare a measure endorsed by many ecological economists is found to possess a variety of virtues but also several imperfections the search for a social welfare measure has not yet ended

innovation and inequality in a small world we present a multicountry theory of economic growth and r d driven technological progress in which countries are connected by a network of knowledge exchange technological progress in any country depends on the state of technology in the countries it exchanges knowledge with the diffusion of knowledge throughout the world explains a period of increasing world inequality followed by decreasing relative inequality knowledge diffusion through a small world network produces an extraordinary diversity of country growth performances including the overtaking of individual countries and the replacement of the technologically leading country in the course of world development

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

seven centuries of european economic growth and decline this paper investigates very long run pre industrial economic development new annual gdp per capita data for six european countries over the last seven hundred years paint a clearer picture of the history of european economic development first the paper confirms that sustained growth has been a recent phenomenon but rejects the argument that there was no long run growth in living standards before the industrial revolution instead the evidence demonstrates the existence of numerous periods of economic growth before the nineteenth century unsustained but raising gdp per capita it also shows that many of these economies experienced substantial economic decline thus rather than being stagnant pre nineteenth century european economies experienced a great deal of change finally it offers some evidence that from the nineteenth century these economies increased the likelihood of being in a phase of economic growth and reduced the risk of being in a phase of economic decline

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

scale prices and biophysical assessments abstract in a recent forum on biophysical assessments a number of ecological economists expressed serious reservations about the use of prices to assess the appropriate scale of macroeconomic systems while such reservations are warranted the preference for biophysical assessments over prices indicates that many ecological economists are focussing on one notion of scale and neglecting another altogether there are two notions of scale that are critical to achieving sustainable development sd one is the maximum sustainable macroeconomic scale the other is the optimal macroeconomic scale the maximum sustainable scale is the largest macroeconomic scale that can be sustained by a throughput of matter energy that is within the ecosphere s regenerative and waste assimilative capacities the optimal scale is a preferable macroeconomic scale and is one that is not only sustainable but one that maximises the net benefits of economic activity biophysical assessments are needed to determine the maximum sustainable scale because ecological sustainability is a biophysical problem not an economic problem thus it is through biophysical assessments that the necessary restrictions on the incoming resource flow can be calculated and imposed however since the achievement of an optimal macroeconomic scale is an economic problem albeit a constrained economic problem relative prices are required to efficiently allocate the sustainable resource flow so the macroeconomy can adjust to the optimum failure to recognise the two notions of scale and the most appropriate means of their assessment is likely to thwart rather than advance the movement toward sd

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

a critique of the perceived solid conceptual foundations of isew gpi irving fisher s cognisance of human health capital in net psychic income abstract this paper puts forward a political economy critique of the perceived solid conceptual foundations of sustainable well being indicators swbis such as isew and gpi a particular version of entropic net psychic income has been implanted as the main conceptual basis for these aggregated measures of sustainable economic welfare however a well known limitation of swbis is that they do not prudently factor in measures of investment and depreciation of human health capital yet this is a critical aspect of sustainable well being it is argued that under fisher s psychic income framework the heart of the indicator is a theory that specifies accounting for some sort of change in the human psyche i e the stock or fund of human health capital advocates of swbis cannot adequately account for the degree of human health or knowledge because this is not their reference point personal consumption expenditures is their reference point political economy seeks to avoid abstracting from the whole reality recognising that endogenous processes of human health capital formation are overdetermined this paper thus argues that there is a significant conceptual shortcoming in isew and gpi which if left unattended will undermine the measure of theoretical legitimacy and empirical efficacy

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

a review of angus deaton s the great escape health wealth and the origins of inequality this book explores the relationship between the material standard of living and health both across countries and over time above all deaton is interested in the question of whether income growth contributes significantly to better health his answer is no saving lives in poor countries is not expensive and there are many episodes of massive health improvements in the absence of income growth as an alternative he argues that the cross sectional correlation between health and income is induced by variation in institutional quality while over time parallel improvements in income and health have been a result of advancing knowledge

transportation costs agricultural productivity and cross country income differences i document large difierences in domestic transport costs and transportation infrastructure across nations the richest countries have 5 times lower transport costs and 32 times more infrastructure per capita than the poorest countries of the world are these difierences a source of aggregate labor productivity difierences across nations using a three sector two region general equilibrium model i show that high transport costs can distort the allocation of resources not only across geographically dispersed production units within sectors but also between agriculture and non agriculture taking as given the observed difierences in transportation costs and transportation infrastructure per capita i quantify the role of transportation for cross country income difierences the calibrated model produces an income disparity of 7 5 between the 5 rich and 5 poor countries this corresponds to an improvement of 50 relative to the disparity predicted by a two sector model of agriculture and non agriculture furthermore the efiects of advancements in transportation are non linear the elasticity of aggregate labor productivity with respect to transport labor productivity in the poorest nations is 6 times higher than in the richest ones the efiects of transport frictions are even more pronounced when restrictions to regional migration are introduced

inequality in landownership the emergence of human capital promoting institutions and the great divergence this paper suggests that inequality in the distribution of landownership adversely affected the emergence of human capital promoting institutions e g public schooling and thus the pace and the nature of the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy contributing to the emergence of the great divergence in income per capita across countries the prediction of the theory regarding the adverse effect of the concentration of landownership on education expenditure is established empirically based on evidence from the beginning of the 20th century in the u s

the role of trade in structural transformation abstract low agriculture productivity is considered a key obstacle to economic development for many countries international trade in agricultural goods can help overcome this barrier and facilitate structural transformation because it allows countries to import part of their food needs this article quantifies the role of trade in this context through the examples of south korea during the last 50 years and great britain in the 19th century to do the analysis i calibrate and simulate a two sector neoclassical growth model to match the data and perform the policy experiments i find that agricultural imports played a crucial role in the early transformation of great britain while in south korea trade also had a positive impact on its structural transformation but it could have played a much larger role if the country had not introduced agricultural protection policies

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

the food problem and the evolution of international income levels in most poor countries large fractions of land labor and other productive resources are devoted to producing food for subsistence needs we show that a model incorporating the food problem can provide new and useful insights into the evolution of international income levels in particular we find that the food problem can explain why some countries started to realize increases in per capita output more than 250 years later in history than others we also show that the food problem has important implications for growth miracles and the speed at which a country converges to its balanced growth path

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

case study on the use of genuine progress indicator to measure urban economic welfare in china abstract the gross domestic product gdp has been widely used to measure the economic growth of a region or a country however it does not distinguish between economic activities that improve the well being and those that impair it it does not reflect the social economical and environmental sustainability either this paper presents a case study using the newly developed economic indicator genuine progress indicator gpi to evaluate the economic performance and human well being in china at an urban level the study also shows how the deficiencies of gdp in measuring the economic performance and well being can be overcome by gpi four cities in china suzhou and yangzhou in jiangsu province ningbo in zhejiang province and guangzhou in guangdong province were chosen in the case study important components of gpi for cost and benefit analysis were developed to address the depletion of nonrenewable resources cost of environmental pollution and net capital investment etc the comparison between gdp and gpi for the four cities and the comparison among the gpis of the four cities and other countries were made over the period of 1991 2001 based on the gpi results recommendations on policy making and infrastructural development were made for the improvement of the overall economic welfare of the cities the advantages and limitations of the gpi method were discussed

increased ecoefficiency and gross rebound effect evidence from usa and six european countries 1960 2002 despite increased efficiency in the use of natural resources the use of these resources continues to increase in most societies this paper examines the discrepancy between the potential decrease of use of natural resources as an effect of increased efficiency and actual use during the period 1960 2002 this difference was found to grow faster in the usa than the mean for six west european countries possible reasons for this difference between the two regions are analysed to reduce the anthropogenic flows of energy and material and the consequent deleterious effects on the biosphere it will become necessary to adapt consumption to degree of efficiency in the use of natural resources based on the comparison between the two regions some economic aspects of this issue are discussed

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

empirics of hills plateaus mountains and plains a markov switching approach to growth abstract most economic growth research has been aimed at explaining cross country differences in average growth rates however it is well known that growth experiences differ over time within a country almost as much as they differ among countries this paper builds on pritchett s 2000 pritchett lant understanding patterns of economic growth searching for hills among plateaus mountains and plains world bank economic review may 2000 14 2 221 250 observation that the growth process can be thought of as transitions between different growth regimes and proposes a framework for systematic analysis of such regimes and the dynamics of the transitions i estimate a markov switching regression to characterize four distinct growth regimes and transitions between them the results show that countries switch among regimes of stable growth miracle catch up stagnation and crisis with the transition probabilities determined by the quality of institutions better institutions appear to improve long run growth by making episodes of fast growth more persistent low average growth rates in countries with weak institutions are a result of these countries spending more time in stagnation regimes rather then being incapable of fast growth at all weak institutions do not rule out growth takeoffs but limit their sustainability the approach directs attention to shifts in growth performance and highlights the fact that identical average growth rates can mask very distinct growth paths

has australia surpassed its optimal macroeconomic scale finding out with the aid of benefit and cost accounts and a sustainable net benefit index abstract the sustainable economic welfare of a nation depends largely on the sustainable net benefits the macroeconomy confers to its citizens for this reason an optimal macroeconomic scale can be considered one where the physical scale of the macroeconomy and the qualitative nature of the stock of wealth it comprises maximises a nation s sustainable net benefits the corollary of this definition is thus the physical scale of the macroeconomy should grow only if in the process the sustainable net benefits of a nation increase it should cease to grow once sustainable net benefits are maximised whilst it is one thing to promote an optimal macroeconomic scale it is another entirely to gain an appreciation of the sustainable net benefits yielded by the macroeconomy gaining such an appreciation constitutes the central aim of this paper with the assistance of two separate benefit and cost accounts to replace gross domestic product gdp a sustainable net benefit index is constructed for australia for the period 1966 1967 to 1994 1995 the index particularly at the per capita level indicates that economic welfare in australia is declining i e the average australian is getting poorer despite per capita real gdp increasing the index therefore suggests that the scale of the australian macroeconomy has probably well exceeded the optimum

economic transformation population growth and the long run world income distribution abstract we present and calibrate a model where trade with advanced economies spurs development and trade opportunities depend on the relative population in advanced and developing countries as developing countries become advanced prospects improve for the remaining developing countries if population growth differentials between developing and advanced economies are small economic development accelerates over time otherwise long run global prosperity requires a sufficiently large initial population in advanced countries more open countries develop faster but more openness by all developing countries may only modestly increase their aggregate growth china s development may hurt developing countries in the short run but improves their long run prospects

the influence of political distortions on economic performance alberto alesina is the nathaniel ropes professor of political economy and chairman of the department of economics at harvard university in this interview he discusses with brian snowdon his views on several important contemporary issues including politics and the business cycle budget deficits currency unions the european union the size of nations economic growth inequality democracy foreign aid ethnic fractionalisation and the welfare state in the us and europe

conservation of mass and instability in a dynamic economy environment system abstract this paper considers a variant of the neumann leontief sraffa general equilibrium models in the context of a jointly determined economy environment system subject to a conversation of mass condition it shows that the conservation of mass contradicts the free disposal free gifts and non innovation assumptions of such models that an expanding economy will be associated with continuous disequilibrating change in the material transformations of both economy and environment and that this change is uncontrollable through the price system

net national product as an indicator of sustainability net national product nnp can potentially serve several objectives among others to measure value added and to be an indicator of welfare in the aftermath of the world commission on environment and development however it also seems important to investigate whether the concept of nnp can serve as an indicator of sustainability my point of departure following hicks 1946 ch 14 is therefore to require that nnp should measure what can be consumed in the present period without reducing future consumption possibilities and in line with this to argue that the nnp should equal the maximum per capita consumption level that can be sustained if sufficiently many facilitating assumptions are made then a concept of nnp that serves as an exact indicator of sustainability can easily be constructed for instance for a closed economy with a constant population a stationary technology and with only one capital good it follows that the present does not reduce future consumption possibilities if and only if it does not decrease the stock of the single capital good hence under the assumption that the one capital good k is identical to the one consumption good x nnp defined as y x k measures the maximal sustainable consumption at time t because then x y is equivalent to k the purpose of this note is to establish that with multiple capital goods it is not in general possible to construct an exact indicator of sustainability on the

the role of the structural transformation in aggregate productivity we investigate the role of sectoral differences in labor productivity in explaining the process of structural transformation the secular reallocation of labor across sectors and the time path of aggregate productivity across countries using a simple model of the structural transformation that is calibrated to the growth experience of the united states we measure sectoral labor productivity differences across countries productivity differences between rich and poor countries are large in agriculture and services and smaller in manufacturing moreover over time productivity gaps have been substantially reduced in agriculture and industry but not nearly as much in services in the model these sectoral productivity patterns generate implications that are broadly consistent with the cross country evidence on the structural transformation aggregate productivity paths and relative prices we show that productivity catch up in industry explains about 50 percent of the gains in aggregate productivity across countries while low relative productivity in services and the lack of catch up explains all the experiences of slowdown stagnation and decline observed across countries

barriers and the transition to modern growth abstract this paper argues that barriers affect both the beginning date and the subsequent pace of modern growth and taking into account this fact enriches our knowledge of cross country income differences the model matches the observed inverted u shape of cross country income differences which implies that a substantial fraction of current income differences is transitional hence the model requires smaller barriers to account for current income differences relative to models that focus only on steady states empirically i find that differences in the beginning dates of modern growth explain large differences in incomes

r d implementation and stagnation a schumpeterian theory of convergence clubs we use schumpeterian growth theory to account for the divergence in per capita income that has taken place between countries since the mid 19th century as well as for the convergence that took place amongst the richest countries during the second half of the 20th century the argument is based on the premise that technological change underwent a fundamental transformation in the 19th century associated with new scientific ideas and the increasingly scientific content of new technologies countries then sorted themselves into three convergence groups r d implementation and stagnation a country s group membership depends on initial conditions as well as on fundamentals

introduction to a general equilibrium approach to economic growth abstract endogenous growth theory has had some success in explaining the observed data related to the process of economic growth however the results of the models in this literature are typically very sensitive to their micro economic structure it is therefore important to understand how the growth process behaves under more general specifications of such features as the number of commodities the number and preferences of consumers the factors of production and the financial and information structures in other words valuable insights can be gained by integrating growth theory into the framework of general equilibrium theory the summary of the papers in this volume focuses on seven issues that are crucial to this integration and highlights the contributions of the papers to the resolution of these issues journal of economic literature classification numbers c61 d50 d90 f43 o30 o41

climate and the emergence of global income differences the latitude gradient in comparative development is a striking fact as one moves away from the equator economic activity rises while this regularity is well known it is not well understood in the present paper we take a step towards unpacking this gradient perhaps the strongest correlate with absolute latitude is the intensity of ultraviolet radiation uv r which epidemiological research has shown to be a cause of a wide range of diseases we establish that uv r is strongly and negatively correlated with economic activity both across and within countries we propose and test a mechanism that links uv r to current income differences via the impact of disease ecology on the timing of the take off to sustained growth

capital theory and the measurement of sustainable development an indicator of weak sustainability the measurement of sustainable development is not without considerable difficulties yet this should not detract from the positive advances that can be made in this direction in this paper we present one form that a weak sustainability indicator can take derived from a simple but intuitive savings rule it incorporates the idea that the level of overall capital stock should be non decreasing although subject to qualification at this stage some interesting results emerge from the application of the rule to 18 countries

australia s genuine progress indicator revisited 1962 2013 abstract the genuine progress indicator gpi has been proposed as an alternative to gdp as an indicator of national progress gpi includes 26 components that adjust gdp for inequality include household and volunteer work and subtract a number of social and environmental costs best seen as negatives the gpi has been estimated for over 20 countries and many states and territories this paper updates australia s gpi to determine whether australia as a nation has progressed overall since the 1960s and compares two alternative approaches that differ in some important details we find that despite these differing approaches we find that gpi remained largely stagnant from the 1960s through to the 1990s and only at the turn of the century has gpi started to increase despite increasing negative environmental costs while gpi is well placed to serve as an improved australian and global measure of national progress further work is needed to measure national well being and support its integration into political decision making and to include the full range of subjective and objective indicators ultimately this paper argues that while gpi is well placed to serve as a new australian and global measure of well being we stress the need for an alternative indicator like gpi to supplement gdp and to better inform policy decisions

measuring sustainable development some empirical evidence for france from eight alternative indicators abstract this paper presents results from a time series analysis of eight measures of development and or sustainability for france the measures chosen are green national net product genuine savings ecological footprint indicator of sustainable economic welfare genuine progress indicator pollution sensitive human development indicator sustainable human development indicator and french dashboard on sustainable development a theoretical description of each index highlights their advantages and drawbacks underlining the fact that no indicator is perfect and no one can give an exhaustive view of sustainable development therefore the analysis of various indicators is necessary to evaluate sustainable development with accuracy empirical results of measures of well being show that french development was improving between 1990 and 2000 concerning sustainability indicators support different conclusions it seems that french development was weakly sustainable but unsustainable in the strong sense over the period examined

between ostrom and nordhaus the research landscape of sustainability economics abstract we survey the emerging research area of sustainability economics through a quantitative full text analysis of peer reviewed journal publications from 1987 to 2013 to identify relevant contributions we draw on existing definitions of sustainability economics for a keyword based identification strategy a combined focus on a the human nature relationship b the long term uncertain future c normative orientation towards sustainability and d economic analysis our analysis of a random subsample of 343 relevant papers reveals that i sustainability economics is a rapidly developing research area ii while theoretical contributions shaped the area in earlier years applied work now constitutes the largest share of contributions iii the research landscape can be clustered into eleven research clusters these range from participatory governance of social ecological systems associated with the work of elinor ostrom to questions of intertemporal allocation and distribution applied to climate economics associated with the work of william nordhaus iv the research area is broad in scope and heterogeneous and there is relatively little interaction between important clusters v relevant contributions are published in more than 100 journals ten journals publish half of all contributions led by ecological economics and 40 appear in non economics journals underscoring the importance of interdisciplinary dialogue

human capital and economic development abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium model of fertility and human capital investment with young adult mortality because young adult mortality is negatively related to average young adult human capital human capital accumulation lowers mortality inducing demographic transition and industrial revolution data confirm that young adult mortality is related negatively to schooling and the rate of return to schooling and positively to fertility the data indicate a negative relationship between tfp growth and schooling accumulation the model fits the data on country populations per capita incomes human capital total fertility rates infant mortality life expectancy and conditional life expectancy

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

democracy development and the international system as noted by seymour m lipset over 50 years ago development and democracy have been strongly correlated in the contemporary world today even after the prolonged democratization wave that started in the 1970s and accelerated in the 1990s the distribution of democracies remains highly skewed by level of per capita income whereas 94 of the countries with a per capita income above 10 000 in constant of 1996 held free and competitive elections in 1999 only 18 with a per capita income below 2 000 did so this empirical relationship between income and democracy was even tighter earlier in history just looking at per capita income we can successfully predict 76 of the annual observations of political regimes in sovereign countries after world war two the proportion of cases that are predicted correctly is 85 for the interwar period and 91 before world war one 1

comparing augmented sustainability measures for scotland is there a mismatch we estimate and compare two empirical measures of the weak sustainability of an economy for the first time the change in augmented green net national product gnnp and the interest on augmented genuine savings gs yearly calculations are given for each measure for scotland during 1992 1999 augmentation means including using projections to 2020 changed production possibilities enabled by exogenous technical progress or changing oil prices the change in augmented gnnp and the interest on augmented gs are both always positive showing no sustainability problem for scotland then according to the assumptions underlying our weak sustainability calculations however the former greatly exceeds the latter even when macroeconomic fluctuations are taken into account this is a mismatch which poses an unresolved problem with the theory resolving it may require respecifying the utility functions used in mainstream growth theory

spatial inequality and development is there an inverted u relationship abstract this paper studies the hypothesis of an inverted u shaped relationship between spatial inequality and economic development the theory of kuznets 1955 and williamson 1965 suggests that spatial inequality first increases in the process of development and then decreases to test this hypothesis i have used a unique panel data set of spatial inequalities in 56 countries at different stages of economic development covering the period 1980 2009 parametric and semiparametric regressions are carried out using cross section and unbalanced panel data the results provide strong support for the existence of an inverted u i also find some evidence that spatial inequalities increase again at very high levels of economic development

redefining the role of the state an interview with introduction by brian snowdon professor joseph stiglitz is without question one of the world s leading economists in his extensive research he has made seminal contributions to the analysis of the economic consequences of incomplete information and uncertainty this work has greatly enhanced economists understanding of the welfare properties of markets and the sources of market failure his research has also contributed to the development of better microeconomic foundations for keynesian macroeconomic models most recently professor stiglitz has been heavily involved in controversial public policy debates relating to the east asian crisis problems of transition from communism to capitalism the limitations of the washington consensus and globalisation and development a common theme in all of these debates relates to the role of government and legitimate borders of the state in both developed and developing economies in this article interview professor stiglitz gives his views on these and several other important global issues

from malthus to modern growth can epidemics explain the three regimes we model demographic and economic long run development in a setting where mortality is endogenous and subject to epidemic shocks the model replicates the full transition from malthusian stagnation to modern growth consistent with the historical facts the economy also passes an intermediate post malthusian phase where growth rates of both population and per capita income increase simultaneously as mortality rates fall and become less volatile the escape from the malthusian trap is the result of a series of mild epidemic shocks making it inevitable at some stage but its timing random calibrations show that it can differ by thousands of generations absent differences in exogenous parameters

the concept of weak sustainability abstract this paper surveys the links between growth theory with exhaustible resources and the concept of weak sustainability it examines the underlying assumptions behind this concept and questions the usefulness of the weak sustainability index as an indicator of sustainable development

measuring sustainability a time series of alternative indicators for scotland this paper presents results from a time series analysis of seven alternative measures of sustainability for scotland the measures chosen are green net national product genuine savings ecological footprint environmental space net primary productivity the index of sustainable economic welfare and the genuine progress indicator these are all measures at the national or macro level we note arguments in the literature that no one single measure of sustainability is likely to be sufficient however very different messages concerning the sustainability of scotland over the period in question 1980 1993 emerge from these measures chosen we also argue that different indicators provide different insights for policy making

asian growth and african development since world war ii integration with the world economy has arguably been the chief route from poverty to wealth japan initially exported cheap goods and later moved on to more technologically sophisticated products when japan became rich korea taiwan province of china hong kong sar and singapore replaced japan as low wage exporters and when these countries moved on to more sophisticated products thailand and malaysia filled their niche more recently china has become an important exporter of manufactured goods and india is increasingly moving into services exports no mainland sub saharan african country has experienced this type of transformation even countries that have undergone major economic reforms seem far from takeoff forecasts for africa based on extrapolation of its historical experience tend to be bleak we consider whether it is possible to construct a model consistent with the data which supports a more optimistic view motivated by the asian experience the model assumes countries can potentially undergo rapid economic transformation only if they integrate into the world economy by producing nontraditional exports for the purposes of constructing a long run model of the world economy we are agnostic on whether exports matter due to technological learning by doing spillovers political economy considerations or other factors as each developing country transforms and becomes advanced it further improves trade opportunities for the remaining developing countries for example if china becomes rich a billion more people will live in countries that import toys and a billion fewer will live in countries that export them our approach is similar to that of robert e lucas 2000 in that we assume growth prospects improve with the state of the world economy potentially generating accelerating world growth unlike lucas 2000 however we allow for differential population growth between rich and poor countries the steady state proportion of the world population living in advanced countries depends on the rate at which developing countries transform into advanced ones and on the magnitude of population growth differentials between these two groups of countries the economic transformation process will overcome the demographic trend leading to a prosperous steady state only if the initial share of world population in advanced countries is above a threshold a simple calibration using historical data suggests that the longrun prospects for lagging developing regions may hinge on a race between economic growth in china and india and population growth in the lagging regions particularly africa if the former wins we may eventually observe accelerating global growth this suggests some caution should be used when interpreting empirical studies on growth determinants as these results may not be stable over time country characteristics that lead to poor performances today may well allow for rapid growth in the future if and when the world economy reaches a sufficiently advanced stage our model also suggests a queuing effect where the order in which countries are absorbed into the world economy is determined by the quality of their policies economic reforms in one country may potentially have a large impact on growth if they move the country to the front of the queue but similar reforms in all countries may have a much smaller impact on world growth

measuring wellbeing performance of carbon emissions using hybrid measure and meta frontier techniques empirical tests for g20 countries and implications for china abstract a quantitative measure of performance that integrates national level carbon emission profiles with key parameters of social and economic wellbeing can provide an effective management tool for policy interventions this paper constructs non parametric evaluation and decomposition models using hybrid measure and meta frontier techniques the proposed models are employed to estimate the wellbeing performance of carbon emissions wpce and identify the sources of wpce inefficiency empirical analyses based on the group 20 g20 countries for the 2000 2015 period shows the worst performance is in the brics country group i e brazil russia india china and south africa known for rapid growth whereas the developed and the developing economies of the g20 group show positive trajectories of performance as for china its performance measure of wpce was the lowest among the g20 indicating significant potential for further improvement the analysis also highlights the role of managerial failure as the primary driver of inefficiency more important than technological inefficiency in explaining efficiency loss within the g20 countries this critical finding the relevance and importance of managerial capability suggests the need for a high level of attention to governance and managerial capacity to ensure continued improvements in performance on carbon emissions and human wellbeing a lesson to be drawn from this study is that china s policies to promote a low carbon economy can benefit from increased priority given to low carbon technological innovation for the energy system transition and enhancement of environmental governance and managerial capacity to achieve a long term sustainability

a cost benefit analysis for the economic growth in china abstract currently traditional development issues such as income inequality depletion of natural resources environmental pollution as well as retardation of infrastructure have occurred in china in the future more pressures would be imposed on china by the continuous fast development of industrialization and with transfer of the world manufacture center to china sustainable development including its economic environmental and social elements is a key goal of decisionmakers this paper develops a methodology on cost benefit analysis of economic growth at macroscopic level to identify issues of china s sustainability in order to address some important issues on how to make policies to improve the quality of economic growth the cba framework developed in this study analyses economic ecological social interaction building three accounts that reflect three dimensions of sustainable development that includes 26 sub models in all and finally is integrated into an index as net progress proceeds npp the estimation methods of these submodels such as cost of environmental pollution depletion of natural resources and defensive expenditures are described in detail based on the framework and methods this paper examines the costs and benefits of economic growth in three aspects of economy ecology and society the results illustrate that npr of china s economic growth had been negative for a long time and has just became positive since year 2000 but was quite low even the best was only 1 6 in 2002 the worst was 24 2 in 1982 based on the comparison between three accounts we can draw a conclusion that ecological cost is the dominant factor that affects china s npr the empirical results show that if no other innovative measures or policies are taken in the future the costs of growth would outweigh its benefits resulting in un sustainability basically the long term economic growth would be unsustainable due to increasing environmental damage and depletion of natural resources there are a few limitations that we consider need to be improved in our cba framework and method nevertheless they have many options that can be explored by policy makers to make the development path more sustainable

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

on the evolution of the world income distribution the post world war ii period has seen substantial changes in the distribution of gdp per worker around the world in the upper half of the distribution a number of countries have exhibited large increases in income relative to the richest countries in the bottom half several countries have seen incomes fall relative to the richest countries the net result of these changes is a movement in the shape of the world income distribution from something that looks like a normal distribution in 1960 to a bi modal twin peaks distribution in 1988 projecting these changes into the future suggests a number of interesting ndings first it seems likely that the united states will lose its position as the country with the highest level of gdp per worker second growth miracles have been more common in recent decades than growth disasters if these dynamics continue the future income distribution will involve far more rich countries and far fewer poor countries than currently observed

natural resources national accounting and economic depreciation abstract the current value hamiltonian in an aggregate optimal growth problem with heterogeneous capital stocks including exhaustible renewable and environmental stocks is the nnp function routine substitutions reveal that the using up of natural resource stocks is representable as easy to interpret economic depreciation magnitudes we obtain true nnp inclusive of natural resource stock diminution implications for actual national accounting practices are also discussed

sustainability assessment of u s final consumption and investments triple bottom line input output analysis the u s final demand categories such as household consumption private fixed investments government purchases and investments and export of goods and services have a wide range of environmental economic and social impacts analysis of these impacts termed as the triple bottom line tbl stimulated a tremendous interest by policy makers over the last decade therefore current research aims to analyze the tbl of u s final demands from a systems perspective to accomplish this goal the supply and use tables published by the u s bureau of economic analysis are merged with a range of environmental economic and social metrics the results show that household consumption has the largest indirect tbl sustainability impacts compared to other final demand categories with shares that range between 43 and 88 industrial sectors including manufacturing utilities agriculture construction transportation and mining are generally found to be responsible for the highest impacts for most of the environmental impact categories service sectors generally have the highest impacts on the economic and social indicators of sustainability analysis results also indicate that while meeting the household demand agriculture utilities and manufacturing sectors have relatively more environmental impacts than their contributions to gross domestic product gdp whereas service sectors contribute to gdp with a higher share than their environmental burdens furthermore it is envisioned that significant reductions in environmental footprints of u s households can be achieved if environmental policies that aim to reduce the household consumption are also supported with sustainable growth through greener and resource efficient economy

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

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

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

evaluating china s urban environmental sustainability with data envelopment analysis abstract china s rapid urbanization has been characterized by excessive economic growth and a series of environmental issues the urban environmental sustainability of 46 typical chinese cities in 2007 was evaluated with data envelopment analysis in this paper and the malmquist productivity index was used to identify the change within 2006 2007 this analysis employed indicators from economic environmental and resource sub systems which are frequently involved in the concept of environmental sustainability we introduced projecting and benchmarking as two possible approaches for less sustainable cities to refer to their peers based on the computed results and empirical analysis the roles of gdp per capita city scale and industrial structure as influence factors of environmental sustainability were explored and the regional disparity of urban environmental sustainability was also investigated the results show 1 24 of the sample cities e g beijing hohhot etc are relatively environmentally sustainable the efficiency scores of urumqi rank the last 2 gdp per capita city scale and industrial structure factors all exert significant influence on urban environmental sustainability 3 the environmental sustainability of southeast cities leads the 6 major chinese regions and cities around the bohai area are rapidly approaching environmental sustainability

the failure of the isew and gpi to fully account for changes in human health capital a methodological shortcoming not a theoretical weakness abstract andrew brennan ecological economics 2013 this issue has argued that the index of sustainable economic welfare isew and genuine progress indicator gpi are theoretically flawed because as indicators designed to capture the net psychic income generated by economic activity they fail to incorporate net changes in human health capital to a lesser extent brennan is also critical of the fact that the isew and gpi are unable to reflect both economic welfare and sustainability whilst i m happy to concede that the two indicators fail to fully account for changes in human health capital it is my contention that this failure represents at most a methodological shortcoming it does not amount to a theoretical weakness despite brennan s best efforts the isew and gpi remain soundly based on irving fisher s distinction between income and capital indeed brennan s suggested modifications to the isew and gpi do nothing but conflate income and capital which if taken on board would lead to misleading indicators of total economic welfare as for not reflecting both economic welfare and sustainability i have long argued that the isew and gpi merely reflect the former and need to be supplemented by biophysical indicators to determine whether the economic welfare being enjoyed by a nation is sustainable the fact that the isew and gpi only reflect economic welfare is not a weakness since no indicator can or should attempt to reflect both conditions the use of strong sustainability approaches to calculate the environment costs incorporated in the isew and gpi is not an exercise designed to measure sustainability it is an exercise in good economic accounting

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

uncertainty and value of information when allocating resources within and between healthcare programmes a two stage stochastic mathematical programming formulation has been developed to optimally allocate resources within and between healthcare programmes when there is an exogenous budget and the parameters of the healthcare models are variable and uncertain this formulation solves the optimal resource allocation problem and calculates the expected value of acquiring additional information to resolve the uncertainties within the allocation it is shown that the proposed formulation has several advantages over the chance constrained and robust mathematical programming methods

barriers to capital accumulation and aggregate total factor productivity i develop a growth model where a single good can be produced with a traditional and a modern technology the traditional technology features low total factor productivity tfp and a low share of reproducible capital in this framework barriers to capital accumulation affect technology use and therefore aggregate tfp the theory thus connects recent models of factor accumulation and of tfp the model is calibrated by interpreting traditional production as agriculture and nonreproducible capital as land the theory implies that barriers are associated with large agricultural shares as supported by cross country and time series evidence the required tfp differences needed in the model to account for a given income disparity are reduced by 1 2 relative to the standard model that abstracts from technology choice

nonlinear economic growth some theory and cross country evidence abstract this paper aims to test the existence of different growth regimes that is of different relationships between growth rate and income level we propose a simple nonlinear growth model and test its empirical implications by estimating markov transition matrices and stochastic kernels we show that growth is indeed nonlinear a first phase of slow or zero growth is followed by a take off and finally by a phase of deceleration we discuss the relevance of these results with respect to the issue of convergence and reversibility of development in the light of models of structural change and technological diffusion

globalisation and economic growth a historical perspective this paper reviews the historical evidence on the relationship between globalisation and economic growth divergence in the growth of income and industrialisation in the twentieth century is documented but it is also noted that international income inequality appears to have decreased since about 1870 and that long run trends in the human development index are much less pessimistic about the experience of developing countries it is argued that trade liberalisation has been good for growth on average but that successful capital liberalisation requires high institutional quality and that the developmental state may have an important role to play in the early stages of development the recent claim by robert lucas that the 21st century will see a massive reduction in income inequality across countries in a globalised world economy is sceptically discussed in the context of empirical evidence that bad institutions are often persistent and that geography is still a major factor in explaining international income differences

estimates of the genuine progress indicator gpi for vermont chittenden county and burlington from 1950 to 2000 the genuine progress indicator gpi a version of the index of sustainable economic welfare isew is a significantly more comprehensive approach to assessing economic progress than conventional measures like gross domestic product gdp gpi adjusts for income distribution effects the value of household and volunteer work costs of mobility and pollution and the depletion of social and natural capital isew or gpi have been estimated for several countries around the world and a few canadian provinces but we report here on the first multi scale application at the city county and state levels in vermont usa we show that it is feasible to apply the gpi approach at these smaller scales and to compare across scales and with the national average data limitations and problems still exist but potential solutions to these problems also exist all three vermont scales had significantly higher gpi per capita since 1980 than the national average indicating the major differences that can exist within countries the gpi per capita for all vermont scales was similar to the national average in the 1950 1980 period but more than twice the national average by 2000 the main factors explaining this difference had to do with vermont s much better environmental performance than the national average in the post 1980 period d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved