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Biophysical measurements are indispensable complements to monetary studies.
Monetary assessments detect changes in the circular flow of money and commodities between households and firms. While such financial analysis are crucial to understand budget constraints and determine optimal allocation of resources, they are blind to questions of resource throughput and scale. By focusing only on financial flows, we behave like the medical doctor whose preoccupation is limited to the patient s blood circulation while giving no attention what so ever to his digestive tract or body weight, to use Herman Daly s metaphor. This is unacceptably dangerous for any organism, be it patient or a nation. Developing an ecological basis for economics .