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

the dynamic behavior of the real exchange rate in sticky price models comment in an article published in the american economic review j n steinsson 2008 argues that two sticky price models driven by real shocks can explain the observed persistence volatility and hump shaped impulse response function of the real exchange rate this comment shows first that correcting an error in one of steinsson s models leads to substantially lower persistence and volatility of the real exchange rate second that steinsson s models cannot match real exchange rate volatility relative to output and third that reasonable variations of the model calibration or specification all lead to lower real exchange rate persistence and volatility or both

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

accounting for the utilisation of geothermal energy resources within the genuine progress indicator a methodological review abstract the genuine progress indicator gpi was initiated to mainly reflect strong rather than weak sustainability principles and embrace a fisherian understanding of income and capital prior to this review neither existing calculation methodologies nor academic reviews of the gpi had considered the possibility that geothermal energy resources might not deliver sustainable yields although geothermal energy is renewable in the sense of the earth s almost ubiquitous capacity to store heat the resources are frequently utilised at a rate that is unsustainable pressure recovery and fluid heat recharge periods typically endure for several decades or more whenever geothermal resources are utilised unsustainably this paper contends that the gpi should deduct monetary costs for the excess depletion this approach would maintain the gpi s methodological correctness as a measure of sustainable economic welfare in current time terms failure to do so is affirmative of the weak sustainability paradigm inferring that overexploited energy resources can be either fully replaced or partially substituted when their yields begin to diminish this paper sets out a new method for calculating gpi cost deductions for the unsustainable utilisation of geothermal energy resources the outlined approach synthesises existing academic theory concerning geothermal production modes and levelised energy cost calculations

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

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

the effects of surprise and anticipated technology changes on international relative prices and trade abstract this paper argues that it is important to distinguish surprise and anticipated components of total factor productivity tfp when we study the international transmission of tfp shocks we document that surprise and anticipated shocks to us tfp induce distinct dynamics for international relative prices the real exchange rate and the terms of trade and international trade real exports real imports and the trade balance our empirical findings can reconcile some conflicting empirical results in the literature and hence lead to a better understanding of the international transmission of tfp shocks in addition we evaluate a standard international macroeconomic model and discuss the mechanisms that may help to replicate our empirical findings

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 modified ghg intensity indicator toward a sustainable global economy based on a carbon border tax and emissions trading abstract it will be difficult to gain the agreement of all the actors on any proposal for climate change management if universality and fairness are not considered in this work a universal measure of emissions to be applied at the international level is proposed based on a modification of the greenhouse gas intensity ghg int measure it is hoped that the generality and low administrative cost of this measure which we call the modified greenhouse gas intensity measure mghg int will eliminate any need to classify nations the core of the mghg int is what we call the ihdi adjusted gross domestic product idhigdp based on the inequality adjusted human development index ihdi the idhigdp makes it possible to propose universal measures such as mghg int we also propose a carbon border tax applicable at national borders based on mghg int and idhigdp this carbon tax is supported by a proposed global emissions trading system ets the proposed carbon tax is analyzed in a short term scenario where it is shown that it can result in a significant reduction in global emissions while keeping the economy growing at a positive rate in addition to annual ghg emissions cumulative ghg emissions over two decades are considered with almost the same results

measuring progress in the degrowth transition to a steady state economy article i nfo in order to determine whether degrowth is occurring or how close national economies are to the concept of a steady state economy clear indicators are required within this paper i analyse four indicator approaches that could be used 1 gross domestic product 2 the index of sustainable economic welfare 3 biophysical and social indicators and 4 a composite indicator i conclude that separate biophysical and social indicators represent the best approach but a unifying conceptual framework is required to choose appropriate indicators and interpret the relationships between them i propose a framework based on ends and means and a set of biophysical and social indicators within this framework the biophysical indicators are derived from herman daly s definition of a steady state economy and measure the major stocks and flows in the economy environment system the social indicators are based on the stated goals of the degrowth

economic growth inequality and well being in advanced industrial societies rising levels of inequality have contributed strongly to the observed gap that has emerged between per capita income and the index of sustainable economic welfare isew which in its current versions is known as the genuine progress indicator gpi yet the isew gpi approach to measuring the social costs of inequality has been criticized as ad hoc the present paper reviews the literature on this topic and efforts to resolve it based on the construction of indicators grounded in a a classical utilitarian ethical framework and b empirical evidence on the relationship between income and well being in the united states after tax income per capita grew at an annual rate of 1 7 between 1979 and 2011 a growth rate of 1 2 per year arises when income is adjusted to account for the social costs of inequality the most common adjustment used in isew gpi studies yields a similar growth rate despite much smaller subtractions from baseline income

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

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

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

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

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

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

estimating the genuine progress indicator gpi for brazil from 1970 to 2010 this paper estimates the genuine progress indicator gpi for brazil from 1970 to 2010 as an alternative indicator to the gross domestic product gdp after a growing disparity between these two indicators in the 1980s when brazil s per capita gpi featured a 35 decline there was a relative catch up in per capita gpi but not one sufficiently strong enough to reduce the historical gpi gdp gap the recent trend of rapidly increasing environmental and social costs along with the decline in unpaid labour and infrastructure services poses concerns about the sustainability of an increasing gpi for brazil into the future policies aimed at reducing environmental costs are necessary if brazil is to enjoy a sustainable pattern of non declining economic welfare brazil must pursue a higher rate of productivity in material and energy consumption in order to keep environmental pressures to a minimum level

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

information frictions and real exchange rate dynamics abstract real exchange rates are highly volatile and persistent i provide a novel structural explanation for these facts using a model with dispersed information among firms when producers face strategic complementarities in price setting uncertainty about competitors beliefs results in sluggish price adjustment that can generate large and long lived real exchange rate movements i estimate the model using data from the us and euro area and show that it successfully explains the unconditional volatility and persistence of the real exchange rate the model also accounts for the persistent and hump shaped real exchange rate behavior conditional on nominal disturbances documented by a structural var about 50 of this persistence is due to the inertial dynamics of higher order beliefs

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

design and meaning of the genuine progress indicator a statistical analysis of the u s fifty state model abstract the genuine progress indicator gpi was designed to reveal the trade offs between costs and benefits of economic growth although originally estimated and contrasted with gross domestic product gdp at national scales an interest in a state level adoption has developed in the united states to inform and guide policy as gpi scholarship and a community of practice has developed questions have arisen about the quality and legitimacy of the gpi to investigate we apply a composite indicator analysis developed by the organization for economic co operation and development oecd to fifty us state gpi estimates using a consistent method we focus on a multi variate analysis of the structure of the composite sensitivity to weighting and aggregation assumptions and the statistical relationship with other well being indicators results are heavily influenced by a small number of components point to a number of unintended policy outcomes and have mixed relationships with allied indicators the study suggests steps towards shared gpi governance among practitioners and researchers consideration of data parsimony and potential double counting and data selection criteria to help fill gaps prioritize needs and better articulate the purpose and meaning of gpi

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

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

using the fisherian concept of income to guide a nation s transition to a steady state economy abstract many ecological economists have long been advocating that industrialised nations should abandon their growth predilection and initiate the transition to a steady state economy to demonstrate how a nation s transition to a steady state economy might be usefully guided fisherian national income one of the best known indicators of sustainable economic welfare is calculated for australia for the period 1967 1997 also calculated for the study period is the changing physical scale of the australian economy by juxtaposing per capita fisherian income and the growth of the australian economy it is shown that australia surpassed its optimal macroeconomic scale in the mid 1970s while around this time australia began a transition to a lower rate of growth that arrested the steep decline in per capita fisherian income australia had reverted back to a high growth policy by the end of the study period it chose not to continue the deceleration towards a steady state economy a policy stance that is likely to be detrimental to the sustainable economic welfare enjoyed by the average australian

genuine progress indicator 2 0 pilot accounts for the us maryland and city of baltimore 2012 2014 abstract for over thirty years the genuine progress indicator gpi has been used to evaluate economic performance quantify benefits and costs of growth and predict effects of policy changes on economic wellbeing the popularity and use of the metric is increasing partially in response to new global demands for metrics that go beyond gross domestic product gdp however because the basic gpi accounting protocols have yet to be consistently updated to respond to theoretical critiques new valuation methods and new data sources a proliferation of studies at the global national and sub national level contain widely divergent methodologies because of this gpi practitioners have called for a new consistent framework to guide future gpi studies gpi 2 0 this paper is an attempt to operationalize some of the concepts that have emerged from gpi 2 0 deliberations online and at recent workshops in the form of gpi 2 0 pilot accounts for the us state of maryland and city of baltimore the goal is to demonstrate the feasibility of multi scale gpi accounts that provide a more accurate measure of current economic welfare than gdp and that incorporate new methods and sources of information to replace many of the outdated aspects of the prevailing gpi approach

national accounts and environmental resources in the paper optimal growth theory is used to derive the appropriate definition of the net national product concept when there are environmental resources and environmental damage to take into account the basic conclusions are that conventional defined np should be corrected by deducting environmental damage and adding the value of the net change of all resources

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

evaluating the trends of china s ecological civilization construction using a novel indicator system ecological civilization construction has become one of the key strategies to address china s serious resource and environmental issues however how to define and how to assess ecological civilization ec are worth further exploring this paper constructed a people oriented ec indicator system composed of a set of indicators viz degree of physiological equilibrium dpe degree of psychological imbalance dpi degree of imbalance of human and environment dihe degree of human development dhp disharmony degree of economy and environment ddee and a composite index ecological civilization index eci and then the indicator system was used to investigate the trends of china s ec construction during 1980 2010 based on the reference year 1980 the study revealed that 1 physiological equilibrium of chinese people has been slightly disturbed 2 psychological balance of chinese people has been broken seriously 3 the balance between human and environment has been destroyed greatly 4 china has achieved great progress in promoting human development 5 this country has improved the relationship between economy and environment obviously despite that this improvement pace still falls behind speed of economic growth and 6 china s ec level has declined during this study period therein psychological problem and conflict between human and environment are the key obstacles to china s ec progress china s government should further emphasize reform of its income distribution system and transformation of its economic development mode in the future

multi attributed environmental index construction abstract this paper presents a framework for constructing multi attributed indices to measure welfare derived by a region s citizenry from environmental resources the framework provides a procedure for integrated regional accounting the process of index construction is based on stakeholder consultation combined with multi attribute utility theory maut it is illustrated by developing a water service index for the great barrier reef gbr region in queensland australia this involved a survey of 901 visitors and residents the index shows how scientific information can be merged with societal preferences for competing water services to attain an overall measure of performance results report regional welfare resulting from alternative policy scenarios and the impact of individual indicators on whole of system performance regional welfare was found to be strongly influenced by instream heavy metal concentrations coral cover and sediment exports the process for index construction developed here could be applied for a multitude of environmental issues it can provide a single unifying measure of performance when an environmental resource delivers numerous services measured in multiple monetary and non monetary units

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

dynamics of the trade balance and the terms of trade the j curve the authors provide a theoretical interpretation of two features of international data the countercyclical movements in net exports and the tendency for the trade balance to be negatively correlated with current and future movements in terms of trade but positively correlated with past movements they document the same properties in a two country stochastic growth model in which trade fluctuations reflect in large part the dynamics of capital formation the authors find that their general equilibrium perspective is essential the relation between the trade balance and the terms of trade depends critically on the source of fluctuations copyright 1994 by american economic association

national natural capital accounting with the ecological footprint concept abstract there is a growing consensus among natural and social scientists that sustainability depends on maintaining natural capital however progress to put this ecological condition to practice has been slow not least because of the inability of making these objectives measurable therefore to overcome this obstacle assessment frameworks for natural capital are needed this study presents a simple framework for national and global natural capital accounting it demonstrates using the example of italy an accounting framework which tracks national economies energy and resource throughput and translates them into biologically productive areas necessary to produce these flows this calculation has been applied to over 52 countries with this framework based on the ecological footprint concept human consumption can be compared with natural capital production at the global and national level using existing data

development of ecological economics in australia and new zealand abstract this paper reviews the development of ecological economics in australia and new zealand since its beginnings in the late 1970s a historical account is presented that focuses particularly on the activities of the australia new zealand society for ecological economics and key ecological economics research activities achievements of ecological economics in australia and new zealand are assessed using a range of quantitative and qualitative data the main areas of expertise developed by australian and new zealand ecological economists were found to be theoretical foundations and visions for ecological economics biodiversity and resilience input output analysis heterodox valuation approaches analysis of economy environment interactions sustainability indicators sustainable agriculture fisheries and oceans and energy thermodynamics both countries are ranked at the top or near the top of the world rankings in terms of per capita isee membership and publication rates in ecological economics a defining feature of ecological economics in australia and new zealand has also been its practical and problem solving focus and the level of end user engagement the paper concludes by discussing the challenges that face the future development of ecological economics in australia and new zealand

brother can you spare some time sustaining prosperity and social inclusion in america s metropolitan regions understanding the factors and processes that help regions sustain economic growth has become a topic of increasing interest in recent years we examine factors associated with the length of growth spells for the 184 largest regions in the united states from the period 1990 2011 we find that growth duration is positively related to a number of factors one might expect including lower levels of reliance on manufacturing and a higher proportion of the population with middle education levels however we also find that the length of growth spells is strongly related to lower levels of metropolitan income inequality and to measures of social and spatial segregation suggesting that more equitable and more integrated regions are better able to sustain growth

the rise fall and sustainability of capital resource economies in debates about green accounting it is sometimes argued that a positive value of aggregate investments indicates that an economy is developing sustainably asheim 1994 and pezzey 1994 have shown that this is wrong using a version of the well known dasgupta heal economy with one capital and one non renewable resource stock as a counterexample asheim s proof referred to the unproved assumptions that in such an economy a higher rate of time preference induces higher initial consumption and vice versa and that optimal consumption is initially rising and then falling here we show that these assumptions do hold true under certain circumstances thereby also proving some of dasgupta and heal s other conjectures about sustainability

hidden linkages between resources and economy a beyond gdp approach using alternative welfare indicators taking gdp as the standard economic indicator for economic welfare recent resources economy studies indicate the dematerialization of the economy the so called decoupling effect this conclusion seems to alleviate concerns over resource scarcity and limits to growth and feeds optimism for green growth and sustainability prospects however the validity of gdp as the sole and unambiguous measure of the ultimate outcome of the economy has been severely disputed there is nowadays increasing interest in broader welfare measurements that capture more aspects of economic output and hence constitute better approximations of well being the present paper provides an overview of the above discussion and sets out to explore the relevance of three alternative welfare indicators the human development index hdi the index of sustainable economic welfare isew and the genuine progress indicator gpi as a basis for evaluating the dependency of welfare and its major engine the economy on natural resources increasing welfare appears to require a disproportionate use of resources strong and increasing dependency on resources at the global level and in giant countries such as china and india may have serious implications for current sustainability policies and the united nations sustainable development goals

diagram for a small planet the production and ecosystem possibilities curve abstract with the development of the gpi there is now an ecological alternative to gdp for measuring a country s economic performance but we still lack an ecological alternative to the ppc for illustrating a country s economic problem the diagram suggested here illustrates a country s production and ecosystem possibilities including climate stability flood control carbon sequestration aquifer recharge scenery recreation biological diversity and so on burning a rainforest to clear the land shifts a country s ppc outward giving the visual impression of an unmitigated improvement but such development causes a movement along the country s pepc as ecosystem services are transformed into gdp the slope of the pepc is the marginal rate of transformation which equals the ratio of the land s marginal marketable product to its marginal ecosystem product changes in technology create substitution and income effects that help explain the enclosure movement and the environmental kuznets curve much as employment of the human resource can be restrained to allow more leisure development of the natural resource can be restrained to preserve more ecosystem services commercial lobbying interests and rivalries for positional goods create distortions that move a country along its pepc to a materialistic misallocation with too little conservation an idealistic misallocation is also possible with too much preservation of the natural environment small is beautiful up to a point and that is evident in this diagram jacob viner s viner j 1937 studies in the theory of international trade harper and brothers new york analytical objections to the ppc are revived

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

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

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

proposed changes to the index of sustainable economic welfare an application to belgium abstract this paper presents the results of a belgian case study on the index of sustainable economic welfare isew the index is first compiled using the standard methodology applied in other international studies owing to the short period in which belgium s traditional isew has recently declined it is not possible to draw any solid conclusion regarding max neef s threshold hypothesis after a brief review of the criticism that the isew has attracted over the years the paper then explains and discusses the rationale for omitting the net capital growth and change in net international investment position items it is argued that these items do not comply with the theoretical foundation underpinning the isew the paper also puts forward new valuation methods for several items within the index the escalation factor in the valuation of natural capital depletion is dropped long term environmental damage is valued using a stock based approach and considerably more government expenditures are considered to be non defensive the results of the revised isew show significant improvements in sustainable economic welfare over the entire study period these findings are not in line with the threshold hypothesis finally the paper offers some guidelines for communicating about the isew namely that a all methodological assumptions should be made explicit and b all raw unadjusted data used should be included in any final isew report so as to enable the reader to make his or her own assessment about the assumptions the researcher has employed

capital gains and net national product in open economies it is shown within a given framework that with the world economy following an egalitarian path the aggregate capital gains being positive is equivalent to the interest rate tending to decrease this result is of importance for the concept of net national product in open economies in particular with positive aggregate capital gains an open economy cannot sustain consuming the return on its capital stocks since some part of the return must be used to augment the country s national wealth it is established that a country s share of world wide sustainable consumption equals its share of worldwide wealth

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

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

the identity of ecological economics retrospects and prospects the paper first reveals the relevance of ecological economics in the time of a triple crisis ecological social and economic and promotes it as a distinct paradigm comprised of two interconnected and interdependent aspects the qualitative framework within which it operates and the quantitative models and techniques it uses to observe ecosystem resilience measure progress towards sustainability and evaluate policies while acknowledging the progress that has so far been made the paper argues that divergences in understanding the meaning and content of ecological economics hinder its effectiveness and influence on real world policy making and calls for a unified framework as a common ground that would strengthen the field and direct research the implication of this position then follows pointing out what has so far been missing from the ecological economics analysis and what should be done for it to become a more problem oriented and policy relevant alternative copyright oxford university press

international real business cycles we ask whether a two country real business cycle model can account simultaneously for domestic and international aspects of business cycles with this question in mind we document a number of discrepancies between theory and data the most striking discrepancy concerns the correlations of consumption and output across countries in the data outputs are generally more highly correlated across countries than consumptions in the model we see the opposite

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

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

the effect of a gated community on property and beach amenity valuation we examine how location in a gated community affects the value of a single family home and the valuation of a beach using data on 2 358 sales on barrier islands near charleston south carolina the empirical results indicate that homeowners pay a premium of 18 6 for a property in a gated community the value of location near a beach is greater in gated than nongated communities