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

on the practical limits to substitution abstract this paper considers the arguments for weak vs strong sustainability the weak sustainability position held by many mainstream neoclassical economists such as solow and weitzman is that almost all kinds of natural capital can be substituted by man made capital the contrary position known as strong sustainability holds that many of the most fundamental services provided by nature cannot be replaced by services produced by humans or man made systems the paper discusses the limits of substitution from a physical point of view it concludes that while there is considerable scope for substitution in some domains the limits to substitutability in the medium term at least are real and important in effect the paper supports the strong sustainability position

optimal diversity of renewable energy alternatives under multiple criteria an application to the uk we propose a multi criteria analysis of alternative combinations of renewable energy technologies to meet a sustainable energy supply it takes into account a range of criteria to reflect relevant environmental social and economic considerations capture the value of diversity and reflect innovative potential and learning capacity the combination of these factors allows for solutions in which there is more balance between economic environmental and social dimensions unlike in previous studies scenarios that might have been preferred on the basis of for example minimal costs or low co2 emissions will have to be reconsidered because of negative effects in terms of land use or unemployment the decision making philosophy in this case changes from that of optimization to multi criteria satisficing this article argues for consideration of the following dimensions of the energy system costs emissions water use land use and employment consideration of such dimensions will shift energy system into the direction of overall sustainability while making it more resilient in the long term the approach is applied to the case of the united kingdom by making use of a markal model complementing its goal of cost minimization with additional social and environmental criteria this gives rise to a number of suggestions for uk energy mix and policy

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

progress along the path evolving issues in the measurement of genuine saving more than 10 years since a practical linkage between sustainable development and a measure of national wealth expanded to include natural and environmental resources was first posited the empirical estimation of adjusted net savings dubbed genuine saving has evolved considerably in this paper we take stock of both progress achieved and the challenges that remain we begin by recalling the key points made in pearce and atkinson 1993 ecol econ 8 103 which presented the first cross country estimates of savings rates adjusted to reflect depletion and degradation of the environment we then briefly summarise the evolution of the theoretical argument linking savings and sustainability however the main focus of this paper is an aspect that concerned david pearce greatly namely the evolution of the measurement of genuine savings we identify and consider the empirical evidence with regard to two particular measurement issues the valuation of exhaustible resources and environmental degradation common to the both issues are concerns about measuring changes in national wealth in real world economies

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

identifying barriers toward a post growth economy a political economy view abstract in this paper we take a political economy perspective on barriers that inhibit a transition beyond the growth paradigm that is we frame transition barriers as looming conflicts of interest specifically we investigate potential transition barriers within three case studies first unemployment represents the most commonly cited reason why economic growth is considered indispensable second alternative indicators to gross domestic product gdp have not succeeded in replacing gdp as a standard metric of economic welfare third pension schemes rely on economic growth to offset demographic change in each of these three examples we identify actor interest constellations that foster the status quo of a growth economy we conclude that compensating some of those actors who would presumably be worse off in a post growth economy may be necessary though not sufficient for a transition

is trade good or bad for the environment sorting out the causality we seek to contribute to the debate over globalization and the environment by asking what is the effect of trade on a country s environment for a given level of gdp we take specific account of the endogeneity of trade using exogenous geographic determinants of trade as instrumental variables we find that trade tends to reduce three measures of air pollution statistical significance is high for concentrations of so2 moderate for no2 and lacking for particulate matter although results for other environmental measures are not as encouraging there is little evidence that trade has a detrimental effect on the environment

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

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

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

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

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

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

a 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

evaluating the transformation of china s industrial development mode during 2000 2009 abstract following the global trend of sustainable development the concepts of transformation of industrial development mode and the new road to industrialization with chinese characteristics were proposed in china around the year of 2000 today the transformation has been carried out for 10 years and the effects and problems as well as experiences are worth discussing this research aims to establish an index system of china s industrial transformation the weight of each indicator which is in the index system is calculated by the two methods entropy weight and analytic hierarchy process ahp respectively for the purpose of high reliability the transformation from 2000 to 2009 is evaluated by the method of weighted average the results demonstrate that china s industrial development mode has been changing progressively however a number of problems still remain for instance china s ability of withstanding external crises is still weak the situation of human capital is still unable to meet the needs of transformation the conversion rate of independent innovation achievements is low the effect of industrial structure adjustment is unsatisfactory the housing price is relatively high and also the rich poor divide in china posts a great threat then several suggestions related to the problems mentioned above are put forward the development of index system and methods are aimed to form a set of useful tools for policy makers to facilitate the transformation of industrial development mode and support sustainable development

global inequality and international trade the paper analyses the effect of widespread trade liberalisation on global income inequality the analysis of the trend in global inequality during 1981 97 presented in the first part of the paper shows that the apparent growth of income inequality among countries conceals a process of convergence some developing countries achieved significantly faster economic growth than the advanced industrialised countries and though small in number they actually account for a majority of the population of the developing world thus international inequality i e the inequality of distribution of per capita incomes among the world s population in fact declined even though the inter country income inequality increased the analysis in the second part of the paper shows i that while improved trade performance did have a stimulating effect on growth performance of countries trade liberalisation had extremely varied effects on trade performance across countries and ii that the distribution of benefits and costs of trade liberalisation across countries has been such as to reduce international inequality without affecting inter country inequality copyright 2004 oxford university press

monthly price premiums and discounts between steer calves and yearlings distributed lags are used to estimate monthly prices and price premiums and discounts between steer calves and steer yearlings the statistical results show that premiums and discounts are not highly seasonal but are affected by expected changes in fed slaughter prices and cost of gain in the feedlot the effects of these variables are sensitive to time thus the latter should be taken into account for future marketing decisions also price flexibility coefficients indicate that profitability risk in cattle finishing is shifted more to price weight differences of cattle placed on feed than to changes in the individual prices themselves

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

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

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

the 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 rational distributed lag model of quarterly live cattle prices quarterly u s feeder cattle and fed cattle prices were estimated within a rational distributed lag framework utilizing nonstochastic difference equations to minimize problems with specification errors in the disturbance structure the behavior of certain input and output variables in the beef market explained the price variation in each reduced form equation the results revealed dynamic stability with a geometric rational lag structure describing fed cattle prices and a polynomial rational lag structure characterizing feeder cattle prices these dynamics were found to be better than both static serial correlation and purely autoregressive specifications

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

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

social multi criteria evaluation methodological foundations and operational consequences in order to address contemporary issues economics and decision sciences need to expand their empirical relevance by introducing more and more realistic thus more complex assumptions in their models one of the most interesting research directions in the field of public economics is the attempt to introduce political constraints interest groups and collusion effects explicitly j j laffont incentives and political economy 2000 the main argument developed here is the proposal of the concept of social multi criteria evaluation smce as a possible useful framework for the application of social choice to the difficult policy problems of our millennium where as stated by funtowicz and ravetz facts are uncertain values in dispute stakes high and decisions urgent this paper starts from the following main questions 1 why social multi criteria evaluation 2 how should such an approach be developed the foundations of smce are set up by referring to concepts from complex system theory and philosophy such as reflexive complexity post normal science and incommensurability to give some operational guidelines on the application of smce basic questions to be answered are 1 how is it possible to deal with technical incommensurability 2 how can we deal with the issue of social incommensurability to answer these questions using theoretical considerations and lessons learned from real world case studies is the main objective of the present article

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

dynamic modelling of energy consumption capital stock and real income in g 7 countries abstract this paper applies an aggregate production function to examine the dynamic linkages among energy consumption capital stock and real income real gdp per capita in g 7 counties we employ the toda and yamamoto 1995 granger causality test the generalized impulse response approach and variance decompositions in a multivariate setting to uncover the extent and the magnitude of the relationship among variables our empirical results find evidence of a unidirectional relationship running from energy consumption to real income in canada italy and the uk indicating that energy conservation may hinder economic growth in the three countries furthermore the causality relationship appears to be unidirectional but reversed for france and japan implying that energy conservation in both countries may still be viable but without being detrimental to economic growth as to germany and the u s there is no causality between the variables which demonstrates the neutrality hypothesis and in such a case economic growth will not affect energy use we further see that the impact of capital stock is relatively higher compared with that of energy consumption transitory initial impacts of innovations in energy consumption on capital stock and real income are observed

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

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

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

sectoral changing patterns of china s green gdp considering climate change an investigation based on the economic input output life cycle assessment model abstract the rapid growth of energy intensive and high emission industries has underpinned china s economic boom over the past few decades since her economic development entered the new normal phase in 2013 china has faced the challenge of mitigating greenhouse gas ghg emissions while achieving medium high economic growth transforming the economic development pattern and restructuring the economy is a principal solution and one important prerequisite is discerning great sectoral disparities of ghg emissions and corresponding environmental costs because the diversity of characteristics among different sectors causes the pollutants that are discharged to vary hence this paper aims to assess the environmental costs of china s total and sectoral ghg emissions based on the system of environmental and economic accounts and using the economic input output life cycle assessment model this study calculates the green gdp and green output value of 27 sectors to reflect the environmental costs of ghg emissions in china during 1991 2016 the findings are as follows 1 while china s direct ghg emissions increased from 3 040 60 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent mtco2eq to 10 641 10 mtco2eq during 1991 2014 declining trends were observed in the total and 16 sectors direct ghg emissions in the subsequent two years 2 although the ratios of direct ghg emissions to total ghg emissions in most sectors decreased total ghg emissions in eight sectors rose first and then fell and in 15 sectors continued to rise 3 china s green gdp grew from 2 003 88 billion chinese yuan to 26 245 25 billion chinese yuan during 1991 2016 and the difference between china s gdp and green gdp decreased from 2 73 to 1 02 and 4 differences between the output value and green output value decreased in over 20 sectors finally some policy implications are given from the perspective of some key sectors of the manufacturing industry agricultural sector and transport storage and post sector

operationalizing sustainable development dynamic ecological economic models abstract since the mid eighties a vast literature has evolved around the concept of sustainable development it shows a wide support for changes in policy making and decision making for instance to integrate environmental interests in national and international political processes remarkably recommendations of contours and new elements of research methods and policy analysis for sustainable development are rare although this is just as essential as the renewed attention for the political dimension a clear view on how to use and change adequately existing techniques and models for sustainable development will contribute to a more satisfactory operationalization of it this paper examines the implications of ecologically sustainable economic development for integrated dynamic modelling after a concise discussion of sustainable development it is suggested that five concepts are central to it intergenerational equity the regional scale multiple use long term uncertainty and economic ecological integration the discussion of each of these issues is focused on the implications for model elements and uses thereby old ideas are reviewed and new ones are proposed the aim is not to come up with a rigid framework for dealing with sustainable development but rather to suggest which alternatives are available to deal with the central concepts although in a section on economic ecological integration general requirements for dynamic economic ecological models are mentioned explicitly in order to offer a general frame of reference these requirements are fairly general and may be taken up in ensuing discussions of the methodological aspects related to sustainable development the main conclusions are the following we view economic ecological integration in the sense of combining processes instead of one process and a variable to deal with intergenerational equity one may choose objectives various constraints or a combination of both for regional models one may consider various types of conditions on cross boundary flows and external factors of regional processes multiple use can be modelled as an intermediate stage between single resource models with a partial view and complex models with a general view sensitivity probability and scenario analyses can be used to deal partially with the various types of long term uncertainty although this remains difficult for the very important class of unexpected events or catastrophes such surprises can at best be turned into risk by scenario analyses and examination of dynamic behaviour of the system as a whole

advertising content when brand choice is a signal this article gives a formal rationale for image advertising and branding of homogeneous products that are consumed in public the idea is that consumers can use brand choice to coordinate behavior and send meaningful social signals the article distinguishes between variety signals and quality signals and analyzes the competitive implications copyright 1990 by the university of chicago

price stickiness empirical evidence of the menu cost channel abstract a leading explanation in the economic literature is that monetary policy has real effects on the economy because firms incur a cost when changing prices using a unique database of cost and retail price changes we find that variation in menu costs results in up to 13 3 fewer price increases we confirm that these effects are allocative and have a persistent impact on both prices and unit sales we provide evidence that the menu cost channel operates only when cost increases are small in magnitude which is consistent with theory and provides the first empirical evidence of boundary conditions

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

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

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

design innovation and fashion cycles a model of fashion cycles is developed in which designs are used as a signaling device in a dating game a monopolist periodically creates a new design over time the price of the design falls as it spreads across the population once sufficiently many consumers own the design it is profitable to create a new design and thereby render the old design obsolete this paper gives conditions under which all consumers would be better off by banning the use of fashion competition among designers may lead to less frequent changes in fashion and to higher prices than monopoly copyright 1995 by american economic association

economic growth sustainable development and food consumption evidence across different income groups of countries abstract considering that high population and income growths will lead the coming decades an increase in global food demand is expected livestock products such as meat are closely related to this trend but also associated with impacts on the environment and public health from land and water depletion to greenhouse gases emissions and higher risks of non communicable diseases this trend raises doubts about the sustainability of the food industry and thus a solution is needed for the problem how to feed the world population without compromising present and future generations the literature suggests that meat consumption should be reduced for the sake of the environment and global population however without considering the effects that such reduction would have on the economy inspired by these facts this paper empirically analyses the interactions between food consumption economic growth and sustainable development measured by the index of sustainable economic welfare more specifically the paper assesses the effect that food consumption has on the economy the econometric analysis applies the autoregressive distributed lag model for 77 countries further distinguished by their income group from 1995 to 2013 the findings support that meat consumption has different impacts on economic growth and sustainable development considering different income groups however there is an evident dilemma between economic growth and sustainable development since meat consumption has contradictory effects on each thus it is crucial to understand how to promote sustainability i e reducing the environmental externalities and chronic health diseases without compromising economic growth

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 sound of silence observational learning in the u s kidney market mere observation of others choices can be informative about product quality this paper develops an individual level dynamic model of observational learning and applies it to a novel data set from the u s kidney market where transplant candidates on a waiting list sequentially decide whether to accept a kidney offer we find strong evidence of observational learning patients draw negative quality inferences from earlier refusals in the queue thus becoming more inclined towards refusal themselves this self reinforcing chain of inferences leads to poor kidney utilization despite the continual shortage in kidney supply counterfactual policy simulations show that patients would have made more efficient use of kidneys had the concerns behind earlier refusals been shared this study yields a set of marketing implications in particular we show that observational learning and information sharing shape consumer choices in markedly different ways optimal marketing strategies should take into account how consumers learn from others

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

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

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

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

weak comparability of values as a foundation for ecological economics the main argument of this paper is that weak comparability of values should be seen as one characteristic feature of ecological economics the formal properties of the concepts of strong comparability implying strong or weak commensurability and weak comparability implying incommensurability will be clarified multicriteria evaluation offers the methodological and mathematical tools to operationalize the concept of incommensurability at both macro and micro levels of analysis the concept of incommensurability of values already has a long tradition in economics moreover we will show that analytic philosophy theories of complexity post normal science and the recent theories of rationality lead with different trajectories to a non algorithmic approach which in our view could be implemented by some forms of multicriteria evaluation 1998 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

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

the physical economy of the european union cross country comparison and determinants of material consumption abstract in this paper we investigate what determines observed differences in economy wide material use among the eu 15 member states the empirical basis for our analysis is an extended and revised material flow data set for each of the eu 15 countries in time series from 1970 to 2001 this data set comprises consistent data for domestic extraction imports and exports as well as for derived material flow indicators broken down by 12 types of materials we compare the level and composition of domestic material consumption dmc in the eu 15 member states and identify determinants of the observed differences across the european union member states overall dmc per capita varies by a factor of three ranging between 12 tonnes per capita in italy and the united kingdom and 37 tonnes per capita in finland this variability of dmc in the eu 15 is in a similar order of magnitude as the variability of gdp per capita or total primary energy supply per capita linear correlation analysis reveals that national income and final energy consumption relate to material use but cannot fully account for the observed differences in material consumption by breaking down overall material flow indicators into 12 categories of materials and analysing their use patterns in detail we identified a number of factors socio economic and natural that influence the level and composition of economy wide material use many of these factors are specific for certain types of materials others are more general and quite some driving factors counteract each other regarding the direction of their influence concluding we summarize the most important driving factors for domestic material consumption stressing population density as largely neglected but important explanatory variable for material use patterns discuss issues of environmental significance aggregation and the use of different denominators in material flow accounting and suggest a re interpretation of dmc

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

the red and the black mental accounting of savings and debt in the standard economic account of consumer behavior the cost of a purchase takes the form of a reduction in future utility when expenditures that otherwise could have been made are forgone the reality of consumer hedonics is different when people make purchases they often experience an immediate pain of paying which can undermine the pleasure derived from consumption the ticking of the taxi meter for example reduces one s pleasure from the ride we propose a double entry mental accounting theory that describes the nature of these reciprocal interactions between the pleasure of consumption and the pain of paying and draws out their implications for consumer behavior and hedonics a central assumption of the model which we call prospective accounting is that consumption that has already been paid for can be enjoyed as if it were free and that the pain associated with payments made prior to consumption but not after is buffered by thoughts of the benefits that the payments will finance another important concept is coupling which refers to the degree to which consumption calls to mind thoughts of payment and vice versa some financing methods such as credit cards tend to weaken coupling whereas others such as cash payment produce tight coupling our model makes a variety of predictions that are at variance with economic formulations contrary to the standard prediction that people will finance purchases to minimize the present value of payments our model predicts strong debt aversion that they should prefer to prepay for consumption or to get paid for work after it is performed such pay before sequences confer hedonic benefits because consumption can be enjoyed without thinking about the need to pay for it in the future likewise when paying beforehand the pain of paying is mitigated by thoughts of future consumption benefits contrary to the economic prediction that consumers should prefer to pay at the margin for what they consume our model predicts that consumers will find it less painful to pay for and hence will prefer flat rate pricing schemes such as unlimited internet access at a fixed monthly price even if it involves paying more for the same usage other predictions concern spending patterns with cash charge or credit cards and preferences for the earmarking of purchases we test these predictions in a series of surveys and in a conjoint like analysis that pitted our double entry mental accounting model against a standard discounting formulation and another benchmark that did not incorporate hedonic interactions between consumption and payments our model provides a better fit of the data for 60 of the subjects the discounting formulation provides a better fit for only 29 of the subjects even when allowing for positive and negative discount rates the pain of paying we argue plays an important role in consumer self regulation but is hedonically costly from a hedonic perspective the ideal situation is one in which payments are tightly coupled to consumption so that paying evokes thoughts about the benefits being financed but consumption is decoupled from payments so that consumption does not evoke thoughts about payment from an efficiency perspective however it is important for consumers to be aware of what they are paying for consumption this creates a tension between hedonic efficiency and what we call decision efficiency various institutional arrangements such as financing of public parks through taxes or usage fees play into this tradeoff a producer developing a pricing structure for their product or service should be aware of these two conflicting objectives and should try to devise a structure that reconciles them

sustainability guided promotion of renewable electricity generation in recent years the threat of global climate change high fuel import dependence and rapidly rising electricity demand levels have intensified the quest for more sustainable energy systems this in turn has increased the need for policy makers to promote electricity generation from renewable energy sources guaranteed prices coupled with a buy back obligation for electricity fed into the grid is a popular renewables promotion instrument especially in europe more recently driven mainly by electricity market liberalisation efforts quota targets for the share of renewables in combination with tradable green certificates tgc have received considerable attention tgc offer a greater theoretical potential for economic efficiency gains due to price competition and the greater flexibility assigned to the obliged parties while guaranteed prices and tgc schemes support the operation of renewable energy technology systems bidding schemes for renewable energy generation capacity are used to raise economic efficiency on the plant construction side all of these policy instruments suffer from the shortcoming that they do not explicitly account for the often widely varying environmental social and economic impacts of the technologies concerned in this paper we propose a methodology for the design of renewable energy policy instruments that is based on integrated assessment in particular we argue that using participatory multicriteria evaluation as part of the design of renewable energy promotion policies would make it possible 1 to differentiate the level of promotion in a systematic and transparent manner according to their socio ecological economic impact and 2 to explicitly account for the preferences of stakeholders a further problem of existing tgc and bidding schemes is that diversity of supply could be severely diminished if few low cost technologies were allowed to dominate the renewable energy market to ensure a certain diversity of technologies our scheme suggests the use of different technology bands for technologies that are relatively homogeneous with respect to their maturity

optimal product line design when consumers exhibit choice set dependent preferences in a market of consumers with varying willingness to pay using product line as a discrimination tool may extract higher profits than serving all consumers with a single product local context effects however point to yet another consideration in designing product lines how the appeal of a product changes with the context provided by other products in the choice set i present a model of product line design that incorporates both discrimination and context management goals and offers recommendations for the variety and positioning of products to this end the model makes use of a framework that allows preferences to be choice set dependent given this framework i study how the firm manages externalities between products created by such dependencies the firm creates distortions above and beyond those resulting from discrimination motives alone for example in a vertically differentiated market for quality quality distortions exist even for the consumers with the highest valuations the range of quality provisions given the number of products is compressed as the relative importance of unfavorable comparisons among products increases surprisingly this compression may even lead the firm to forego discrimination among consumers regardless of the cost of offering distinct products

nuclear energy consumption oil consumption and economic growth in g 6 countries bootstrap panel causality test abstract this study applies bootstrap panel granger causality to test whether energy consumption promotes economic growth using data from g 6 countries over the period of 1971 2010 both nuclear and oil consumption data are used in this study regarding the nuclear consumption economic growth nexus nuclear consumption causes economic growth in japan the uk and the us economic growth causes nuclear consumption in the us nuclear consumption and economic growth show no causal relation in canada france and germany regarding oil consumption economic growth nexus we find that there is one way causality from economic growth to oil consumption only in the us and that oil consumption does not granger cause economic growth in g 6 countries except germany and japan our results have important policy implications for the g 6 countries within the context of economic development

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

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

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

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

effects of government programs on rice acreage decisions under rational expectations the case of taiwan the effects of government programs on rice production in taiwan are examined under the rational expectations hypothesis results suggest that a crop shifting program designed to divert rice production to other targeted crops was unsuccessful because of contradictory government programs under rational expectations the marginal effects of a price support program on acreage decline as soon as targeted price is no longer increasing

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

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

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

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

the sustainable development consequences of imf debt vs capital control comparing progress in gpi and gdp terms for korea and malaysia abstract the panic wrought by the 1997 asian financial crisis spurred different mitigative measures some states assented to imf bailout and restructuring while others enforced capital control since then despite intense academic and regulatory scrutiny of the nuances of the recession empiric focus on recovery trajectory of affected countries centred chiefly around traditional gdp metrics an approach that disregards economic performance in a manner congruent with sustainable development goals sdg in this paper we adopt a broader sdg compatible approach by tracking two affected countries korea and malaysia recovery via operationalizing an alternative growth indicator gpi genuine progress indicator first we construct a 35 year long gpi index from 1980 to 2014 and employ the solow growth model to measure the impact of the two remedial measures on gdp and gpi of both countries employing an ardl approach we find external debt to impact significantly the gdp and gpi of korea meanwhile for malaysia the controversial capital control failed to register significant impact moreover unemployment rates trade openness fixed capital formation and the history of previous crises are found to be influential determinants of gdp and gpi with credit and exchange rate variables showing ambiguous results

research note price discrimination as an adverse signal why an offer to spread payments may hurt demand firms often search enthusiastically for distinguishing traits that they may use to price discriminate between segments yet there are occasions in which firms forgo the opportunity to price discriminate and instead charge a single price traditional explanations for why retailers forgo the opportunity to price discriminate focus on the cost of discriminating including operational costs explicit discrimination costs and implicit discrimination costs in this paper we identify an additional reason for why firms may forgo an opportunity to price discriminate by revealing that a product is being sold to a broad range of segments a retailer implicitly claims that the product is suitable for each segment however claiming that a premium quality product is suitable for price sensitive consumers undermines the credibility of a retailer s quality claim the signaling explanation was motivated by extensive discussions over more than a year with a major catalog retailer that sells premium quality jewelry and gifts discussions with managers revealed that they were reluctant to use any price discrimination mechanism that signals their products are targeted at price sensitive customers for example the catalog does not include sale or clearance sections and does not target more price sensitive customers by using separate items however management was under some pressure to consider installment billing offers which allow customers to pay over a series of periods rather than in a lump sum management feared that offering installment billing may adversely affect customers quality perceptions and demand to investigate this issue we develop a general game the oretic model illustrate how the model extends to installment billing and conduct a large scale field test the general model illustrates how selling to multiple segments may lead to an adverse quality signal we illustrate how the model extends to installment billing offers in a direct mail catalog installment billing offers allow customers to spread the total payment over a series of payments all customers have the option of using installment billing and customers who use the plan receive an economic benefit an interest free loan we would normally expect this type of offer to increase demand or at a minimum leave demand unchanged however because installment billing offers target credit constrained customers we predicted that the introduction of installment billing would prompt an unfavorable quality inference and reduce demand among quality sensitive customers we empirically investigated this prediction in a large scale field test with a catalog that offers premium quality jewelry and gifts two versions of the catalog were created a test version that contained an installment billing offer and a control version in which installment billing was not offered importantly the prices in both the test version and control version were identical approximately 240 000 catalogs were mailed and customers were randomly assigned to either the test version or control version results show that the installment billing offer test version was associated with both a reduction in the number of orders received and a reduction in aggregate revenue offering installment billing resulted in approximately 15 000 in lost revenue the only plausible explanation for this counterintuitive finding appears to be the signaling theory to investigate the long term effects the catalog agreed to survey their customers to measure how an offer of installment billing affects their customers quality perceptions similar to the field test two versions of a catalog were created and customers were randomly mailed a catalog along with a short survey respondents were asked to browse through the catalog and return their responses in a replypaid envelope the findings are consistent with customer beliefs in the signaling model offering installment billing lowers the perceived quality of the items in the catalog the field test and survey findings were both statistically significant and managerially relevant together the results convinced the catalog not to include installment billing offers in future catalogs

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

on the impact of trade openness on growth further evidence from oecd countries this study attempts to examine empirically the implications of the degree of openness for total and individual factor productivity growth in a group of 19 oecd countries over the last three decades the study combines both time series and cross sectional data the model employed is a generalization of the commonly used growth accounting model based on the concept of an aggregate production function in which the rate of economic growth is a function of capital and labour accumulation and total factor productivity it is explicitly assumed that total factor productivity depends in turn upon the rate of export expansion the model is then estimated using the random coefficients approach while results generally indicate that the relative importance of trade openness on economic growth varies significantly across countries they also indicate that the role of capital and labour accumulation in fostering economic growth varies with the degree of openness cross sectionally as well as across time

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

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

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