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

on measuring the quality of life abstract it is widely recognized that per capita income is not an adequate indicator of aggregate well being it has thus become customary to use a range of socioeconomic indices for assessing the quality of life in a society in this article we extend measures of general well being in current use by including ordinal indices of political and civil liberties and we provide a ranking of the world s poorest countries on the basis of the borda rule we then compare improvements in socioeconomic performance with the availability of political and civil liberties during the decade of the 1970s and observe that improvements in per capita national income life expectancy at birth and infant mortality are positively correlated with the extent of political and civil liberties enjoyed by citizens while improvements in literacy are negatively correlated with these liberties

monetary policy inclinations we examine whether central banks should complement their inflation forecasts with interest rate projections introducing a central bank loss function that accounts for deviations from announcements we incorporate the publication of policy inclinations into a dynamic monetary model we show that in the presence of cost push shocks the publication of interest rate forecasts tends to improve welfare

price setting supergames with capacity constraints this paper examines the role of industry capacity in enforcing collusion in the context of repeated games for a fixed capacity per firm it is shown that changes in the number of firms have a non monotone effect on the best enforceable cartel price this is due to the fact that while an additional firm lowers the share that each of the other firms enjoys at the collusive price it also increases the losses to each firm should the cartel fail

announcements of interest rate forecasts do policymakers stick to them if central banks value the ex post accuracy of their forecasts previously announced interest rate paths might affect the current policy rate we explore whether this forecast adherence has influenced the monetary policies of the reserve bank of new zealand and the norges bank the two central banks with the longest history of publishing interest rate paths we derive and estimate a policy rule for a central bank that is reluctant to deviate from its forecasts the rule can nest a variety of interest rate rules we find that policymakers appear to be constrained by their most recently announced forecasts

carbon weighted economic development performance and driving force analysis evidence from china based on a data envelopment analysis framework this study develops an indicator termed as carbon weighted economic development cwed covering the dimensions of energy environment economy and resources to measure the economic development performance in a carbon emission conscious economy as an empirical application the proposed approach is applied to a case study of 30 provinces in china in addition to identify the driving forces underlying low carbon economic development in china we analyze the endogenous interactions and dynamic behaviors between cwed foreign direct investment foreign trade industrial structure local fiscal expenditure and energy consumption structure using a panel vector auto regression model the main findings show that 1 adjusting industrial structure by vigorously developing the service industry and reducing the coal energy share in the primary energy consumption structure are the two most effective approaches to improve cwed in both the short run and long run in return cwed has positive feedback effects on both approaches in the long run 2 increase of the fiscal expenditure has a short term positive effect on cwed 3 fdi has an indirect negative effect on cwed in the long run and foreign trade has an indirect positive effect on cwed in the short term

the human development index yet another redundant composite development indicator abstract in its human development report 1990 the united nations development program undp proposes yet another composite indicator of development levels the human development index hdi the hdi assesses intercountry development levels on the basis of three so called deprivation indicators life expectancy adult literacy and the logarithm of purchasing power adjusted per capita gdp using simple statistical analysis this paper questions both the composition of the hdi and its usefulness as a new index of development it concludes that the hdi is both flawed in its composition and like a number of its predecessors fails to provide insights into intercountry development level comparisons which preexisting indicators including gnp per capita alone cannot

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 sustainable welfare index towards a threshold effect for italy abstract gdp as a key parameter for macro economic policy has long been criticized one of the better known monetary alternatives to gdp is the isew a synthetic proxy of sustainable welfare theoretical and methodological limitations of this indicator have been identified and several refinements or extensions proposed gpi for example building on these approaches this article presents a new composite flow oriented indicator directly comparable with gdp the proposed sustainable welfare index swi is calculated for the italian case over the 1960 2014 period the estimate of swi over an extended period of fifty four years provides evidence for a previously undetected threshold effect in italy by means of a flow oriented indicator unlike gdp swi per capita stops increasing in 1991 empirical results show that the level of sustainable welfare in italy stops growing mainly because of a rise in income inequality a decline in non paid domestic work and a worsening of the net fixed capital formation and net international investment position

a modified human development index abstract this paper discusses a modified index for measuring human development the suggested index is based on the components of the human development index hdi developed by the united nations development programme undp since 1990 it discusses two categories of technical issues related to the hdi for 1995 those related to the components and those relevant to the structure of the index the data from the human development report 1995 for 174 countries are used to test the robustness of the suggested index and the results are compared to those of the hdi the new index is then used to delineate with some justification different groups of countries at various levels of human development

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

solution and estimation of re macromodels with optimal policy macro models of monetary policy typically involve forward looking behavior except in rare circumstances we have to apply some numerical method to find the optimal policy and the rational expectations equilibrium this paper summarizes a few useful methods and shows how they can be combined with a kalman filter to estimate the deep model parameters with maximum likelihood simulations of a macro model with staggered price setting interest rate elastic output and optimal monetary policy illustrate the properties of this estimation approach

ringleaders in larger number asymmetric cartels the concept of a cartel ringleader has specific legal meaning but has received relatively little attention in the economic literature of cartels this article draws on a sample of 89 european cartels to identify how often ringleaders exist who they are and what they do it argues that ringleaders are more likely where the traditional cartel problems are likely to be most acute i e with larger numbers of members exhibiting substantial size asymmetries this is confirmed for price fixing and bid rigging cartels and is especially pronounced where the ringleader displays aggressive as opposed to merely organisational behaviour

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

sustainability and wellbeing a scientometric and bibliometric review of the literature interdisciplinary research on measuring the progress towards sustainability and well being saw from different perspectives and in various contexts has developed dramatically over recent decades this growth in the literature has not only added an enormous number of dimensions to the saw debate but the sheer scale of the expansion has challenged researchers to be able to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the available saw indicators in this work we have proposed a hybrid method comprised of sophisticated scientometric analysis to summarise scientific developments in the massive text corpus of the saw literature in conjunction with a more traditional literature review to categorise the fuzzy details that remain scientometric analysis highlights that the developed oecd countries play a vital role in the development and applications of saw indicators and we describe key developments in this regard via a range of graphical approaches using an extensive collection of existing saw indicators the analysis is then summarised in a matrix of ranked indicators which serve as a powerful tool to compare contrast filter and select indicators for saw assessment with minimum redundancies between indicators the approach undertaken in this study is intended to be flexible and can be extended and applied to other fields of research

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

measuring countries environmental sustainability performance a review and case study of iceland abstract evaluating the environmental sustainability performance of a nation is complex this paper considers the merits of environmental indices and how effective they are when assessing the environmental sustainability of any nation the simplicity and generic qualities of environmental indices currently necessitates a much broader analysis in order to evaluate any nation s genuine environmental sustainability credentials ultimately the development of a synthetic environmental sustainability index is required to fulfil this task using iceland as a case study this paper reviews the usefulness of four selected environmental indices environmental vulnerability index environmental performance index ecological footprint and happy planet index for governance institutions when formulating reasoned responses to challenges by adopting a holistic methodology iceland s environmental sustainability credentials are critically examined in this paper with particular focus given to the impacts deriving from expanded renewable energy utilisation in recent years abundant geothermal and hydropower energy resources have been increasingly used to power heavy industry particularly aluminium production the wider health implications and long term environmental sustainability consequences of renewable energy utilisation have not been analysed in depth within any of the indices socio economic progress in iceland has also been attained alongside the imposition of the highest ecological footprint of any nation in the world as such economic activities in iceland have not occurred in accordance with commonly accepted notions of sustainable development which is focused upon the reconciliation of economic environmental and social objectives together with recognition of current and future need across these domains

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

resource accounting in measures of unsustainability challenging the world bank s conclusions the world bank has recently published acomprehensive study of environmental and resourceaccounting covering 103 countries world bank1997a the study concludes that many sub saharan northern african and middle east countries have hadnegative genuine saving rates over the last 20years and therefore fail to pass the test of weaksustainability this paper argues that the bank sconclusions depend on a method for computing usercosts from resource exploitation that is challengedby two competing ones the el serafy method andthe method of repetto et al and is inferior to oneof its rivals resource rents are re computed usingthe el serafy method for 14 countries and thesub saharan and northern african and middle eastregions the results are that both regions andalmost all countries either stop exhibiting signs ofunsustainability or their unsustainability can beexplained without having recourse to resourceaccounting however for congo ecuador gabon nigeria mauritania and trinidad and tobago there isa lesson these countries did not adequately use theopportunities they were given through their naturalresource endowments and should learn from theirmistake for the future depletion of their remainingreserves of natural resources

a measure of sustainable national income for the netherlands abstract we present calculations on the sustainable national income sni indicator first proposed by hueting which corrects net national income nni for the costs to bring back environmental resource use to a sustainable level using an applied general equilibrium age model specifying 27 production sectors we calculate different variants of sni for the netherlands in 1990 given a set of pre determined sustainability standards the age model is extended with emissions and abatement cost curves based on large data sets for nine environmental themes the model combines the advantages of a top down approach the age model with the information of a bottom up approach the environmental data and data on emissions reductions costs the presented numerical results show that in 1990 dutch sni is about 50 below nni though many uncertainties are still present in the data and the model the enhanced greenhouse effect is the most expensive environmental theme

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

optimal accommodation by strong policymakers under incomplete information abstract this paper examines the optimal behavior of a policymaker who is able to precommit labelled strong when the public entertains the possibility that he is either strong or weak unable to precommit the main result is that in the presence of doubts about their type it is optimal even for strong policymakers to partially accommodate inflationary expectations this contrasts with vickers 1986 who finds that when strength is conceived in terms of the relative concern for employment the strong policymaker inflates less under incomplete than under full information the paper also provides a theory of endogenous announcements

optimal interest rate smoothing this paper considers the desirability of the observed tendency of central banks to adjust interest rates only gradually in response to changes in economic conditions it shows in the context of a simple model of optimizing private sector behaviour that assignment of an interest rate smoothing objective to the central bank may be desirable even when reduction of the magnitude of interest rate changes is not a social objective in itself this is because a response of policy to irrelevant lagged variables may be desirable owing to the way it steers private sector expectations of future policy

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

measuring environmental policy stringency approaches validity and impact on environmental innovation and energy efficiency abstract solid tests of the impact of environmental and energy policy on important economic outcomes such as innovation productivity competitiveness and energy and carbon efficiency are impaired by the lack of appropriate empirical proxies for the commitment to and stringency of environmental policy we contribute to the literature by 1 computing different indicators of environmental policy stringency 2 testing to what extent they convey similar insights through a statistical comparison exercise and 3 showing the implications of using one or the other indicator in two illustrative empirical applications focused on environmental innovation and energy efficiency we conclude by highlighting the implications of our analysis for empirical research focusing on the evaluation of policy impacts and highlight fruitful future research avenues

estimates of the genuine progress indicator gpi for oregon from 1960 2010 and recommendations for a comprehensive shareholder s report abstract the genuine progress indicator gpi is a significantly more comprehensive approach to assessing economic progress than conventional measures such as gross domestic product gdp we estimated the gpi for the state of oregon from 1960 2010 we found that it tracked the gross state product gsp for the period 1970 2000 but began to diverge and flatten out in 2000 the major reasons for this divergence were increasing inequality loss of farmland and decreasing personal consumption expenditures as a fraction of gsp oregon gpi per capita leveled off in 2000 while the us gpi capita leveled off in 1975 the gpi is not the perfect indicator of economic and social well being but it is a better approximation than gdp as more states and countries begin to recognize the inappropriateness of gdp as a policy goal we can expect to see much more emphasis on and use of alternative indicators like gpi we recommend extending these indicators to include a comprehensive shareholder s report that reflects all the state s capital assets including built human social and natural capital

the case for forecast targeting as a monetary policy strategy at central banks around the world forecasts have come to play an increasingly important role both in policy deliberations and in communications with the public the most striking examples are the bank of england sweden s riksbank norway s norges bank and the reserve bank of new zealand all of which conduct policy on the basis of a procedure sometimes referred to as inflation forecast targeting svensson 1997 1999 under this approach the central bank constructs quantitative projections of the economy s expected future evolution based on the way in which it intends to control short term interest rates and public discussion of those projections is a critical part of the way in which the bank justifies the conduct of policy to the public what accounts for the appeal of a forecast targeting approach and should it be adopted more widely or more explicitly i begin by reviewing the long running debate between the proponents of monetary rules intended to ensure confidence in the value of money over time and the proponents of discretionary monetary policy aimed at stabilizing the real economy i will argue that inflation forecast targeting represents a powerful synthesis of the two approaches in particular it is an improvement both over simpler rules such as targeting a monetary aggregate and over weaker versions of inflation targeting i shall also argue that a much more extensive communication policy is crucial to escaping from the limitations of the traditional alternatives of rigid rules or rudderless discretion i will then explore some common questions that arise about inflation forecast targeting should only the inflation forecast matter and if not in what way should forecasts of other economic variables affect policy decisions what assumptions about the course of future policy should be used in constructing the quantitative projections that are presented to the public finally given that economic forecasts

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

macroeconomic measures of sustainability this paper reviews the policy need for indicators of sustainable development and the impetus behind recent moves to establish official indicators the range of indicators available from current economic theory is then examined these measures may be divided into those based on flows and those based on stocks flow based measures are essentially attempts to adjust net national product to transform it into an indicator of sustainability stock based measures revolve around the concept of the natural and man made capital stocks we also consider the idea of safe minimum standards as a sustainability indicator the paper concludes that no currently available single measure of sustainability is likely to be adequate

the inequality adjusted human development index a constructive proposal abstract this paper proposes a method to incorporate a concern for distributional inequalities of income education and longevity into the framework of the human development index hdi as it is presently designed by the united nations development programme the paper constructs gini coefficients for a set of 20 developing countries measuring inequalities in annual income educational attainment and life span attainment these calculations are combined with data from the hdi to produce an inequality adjusted human development index iahdi the implications of this proposed index for evaluating and promoting development are considered

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

collusion among asymmetric firms the case of different discount factors abstract this study investigates collusive behavior among asymmetric firms for this purpose we develop a selection criterion for deriving a unique collusive outcome and apply it to the case when firms have different discount factors our analysis reveals that for collusion to be self enforcing it is unnecessary that all firms have sufficiently high discount factors but rather only that firms on average have a sufficiently long run view the optimal collusive outcome entails a strict ordering of output quotas in which firms with relatively low discount factors receive a disproportionate share of market demand as found in the case of a common discount factor a fall in a firm s discount factor reduces the likelihood of successful collusion this effect reduces firm profits on the other hand in the event that firms can collude a lowering of a firm s discount factor increases its output quota so that its profits rise

communication about future policy rates in theory and practice a survey we discuss the theoretical rationale for central bank communication about future policy rates either as part of inflation targeting or in the form of forward guidance we also summarize both actual central bank communication about future policy rates and empirical evidence on the effectiveness of these types of communication we argue that there is a disconnect between the theory and practice of forward guidance as theory assumes commitment on the part of the central bank while in practice central banks generally do not commit future theoretical research on forward guidance should therefore take the absence of commitment by central banks into account

collusion and research joint ventures i examine the question whether cooperation in r d among firms producing similar products leads to product market collusion suppose that firms engage in a stochastic r d race while maintaining the collusive equilibrium in a repeated game framework innovation under non cooperative r d leads to an inter firm asymmetry destabilizing collusion in pre discovery and post discovery periods innovation sharing under cooperative r d preserves the symmetry and also increases total profit thereby facilitating collusion however welfare may increase with cooperative r d i also examine the condition for collusion under licensing and compare the results

inflation forecast contracts we introduce a new type of incentive contract for central bankers inflation forecast contracts which make central bankers remunerations contingent on the precision of their inflation forecasts we show that such contracts enable central bankers to influence inflation expectations more eectively thus facilitating more successful stabilization of current inflation inflation forecast contracts improve the accuracy of inflation forecasts but have adverse consequences for output on balance paying central bankers according to their forecasting performance improves welfare

a review of limitations of gdp and alternative indices to monitor human wellbeing and to manage eco system functionality abstract the misuse of gross domestic product as a measure of public wellbeing results from the idea that economic growth is always synonymous with enhanced quality of life disregarding the fact that the economy profits from natural social and human capital in order to monitor progress towards sustainability and increased well being governments working closely with scientists developed new metrics that go further than income and material wealth there are several candidates for revisions of the gross domestic product based on a comprehensive literature review this paper identified several possible indicators that intend to adjust supplement or substitute for gross domestic product two main approaches were identified the first uses gross domestic product as foundation to build a complete index and includes proposals to greening gross domestic product socializing the indices and including it in a more comprehensive index the second approach relates to efforts to redefine the indicators with the use of environmentally oriented indicators and socially oriented measures challenges to measure development welfare and wellbeing are discussed to provide a wide angle view of efforts to develop measures of social economic ecological status and progress beyond the current very narrow gross domestic product it was recognized an urgent need for guidance for the development of governance regimes designed to change from short term decision making processes to those which support the multi decade planning and implementation processes that are needed to guide the transition to post fossil carbon societies this comprehensive review covers a wide range of topics from problems of gdp to challenges and thoughts about indicators the review shows that if mankind is concerned with the sustainable development of the planet as a whole then progress indicators measured only in monetary or social terms are limited and restricted to the weak or the medium sustainability model and must be complemented by biophysical indicators it is time to change the global knowledge of what progress really is changing the discussion from growth to sustainable development and human well being

revisiting isew valuation approaches the case of spain including the costs of energy depletion and of climate change abstract this paper develops an index of sustainable economic welfare for spain from 1970 to 2012 and seeks to update valuation approaches to a number of items two approaches have proven particularly controversial over recent decades the costs of energy depletion and of climate change the valuation implications in measuring present welfare have proven problematic as both include future sustainability consequences arising from resource depletion and environmental impacts this study includes a transition cost approach to energy depletion a modified approach to costs of climate change and water pollution and removes the cost of ozone depletion the results illustrate that while gdp per capita increased significantly the isew per capita shows a widening gap household labour contributes strongly but income distribution energy depletion and costs of climate change limit improvement sensitivity analysis shows that accumulating climate change costs and escalating energy depletion costs have significant effects nevertheless the new valuation approaches do not alter conclusions that welfare has shown little improvement the isew provides a useful alternative to current indicators such as gdp subject to awareness of limitations it is a measure of welfare that uses sustainability accounting methods when estimating costs but is not an indicator of whether welfare is actually sustainable

a price setting supergame between two heterogeneous firms when firms attempt to tacitly collude they inevitably face a market sharing problem this problem is further complicated when firms have asymmetries this paper studies a price setting supergame between two firms with different costs the paper investigates sustainability of tacit collusion and solves the market sharing problem under tacit collusion the resulting equilibrium from the supergame is used to study limit pricing government policies toward entrants and welfare change due to technological progress and a change in the time discount rate the paper shows that even costlessly achieved technological progress can decrease social welfare