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Author: Marc Fleurbaey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199346917
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 395
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Book Description
In spite of recurrent criticism and an impressive production of alternative indicators by scholars and NGOs, GDP remains the central indicator of countries' success. This book revisits the foundations of indicators of social welfare, and critically examines the four main alternatives to GDP that have been proposed: composite indicators, subjective well-being indexes, capabilities (the underlying philosophy of the Human Development Index), and equivalent incomes. Its provocative thesis is that the problem with GDP is not that it uses a monetary metric but that it focuses on a narrow set of aspects of individual lives. It is actually possible to build an alternative, more comprehensive, monetary indicator that takes income as its first benchmark and adds or subtracts corrections that represent the benefit or cost of non-market aspects of individual lives. Such a measure can respect the values and preferences of the people and give as much weight as they do to the non-market dimensions. A further provocative idea is that, in contrast, most of the currently available alternative indicators, including subjective well-being indexes, are not as respectful of people's values because, like GDP, they are too narrow and give specific weights to the various dimensions of life in a more uniform way, without taking account of the diversity of views on life in the population. The popular attraction that such alternative indicators derive from being non-monetary is therefore based on equivocation. Moreover, it is argued in this book that "greening" GDP and relative indicators is not the proper way to incorporate sustainability concerns. Sustainability involves predicting possible future paths, therefore different indicators than those assessing the current situation. While various indicators have been popular (adjusted net savings, ecological footprint), none of them involves the necessary forecasting effort that a proper evaluation of possible futures requires.
Author: Marc Fleurbaey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199346917
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 395
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Book Description
In spite of recurrent criticism and an impressive production of alternative indicators by scholars and NGOs, GDP remains the central indicator of countries' success. This book revisits the foundations of indicators of social welfare, and critically examines the four main alternatives to GDP that have been proposed: composite indicators, subjective well-being indexes, capabilities (the underlying philosophy of the Human Development Index), and equivalent incomes. Its provocative thesis is that the problem with GDP is not that it uses a monetary metric but that it focuses on a narrow set of aspects of individual lives. It is actually possible to build an alternative, more comprehensive, monetary indicator that takes income as its first benchmark and adds or subtracts corrections that represent the benefit or cost of non-market aspects of individual lives. Such a measure can respect the values and preferences of the people and give as much weight as they do to the non-market dimensions. A further provocative idea is that, in contrast, most of the currently available alternative indicators, including subjective well-being indexes, are not as respectful of people's values because, like GDP, they are too narrow and give specific weights to the various dimensions of life in a more uniform way, without taking account of the diversity of views on life in the population. The popular attraction that such alternative indicators derive from being non-monetary is therefore based on equivocation. Moreover, it is argued in this book that "greening" GDP and relative indicators is not the proper way to incorporate sustainability concerns. Sustainability involves predicting possible future paths, therefore different indicators than those assessing the current situation. While various indicators have been popular (adjusted net savings, ecological footprint), none of them involves the necessary forecasting effort that a proper evaluation of possible futures requires.
Author: Rutger Hoekstra
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108497330
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 371
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Book Description
Proposes an new strategy for the beyond-GDP community which aims to replace the economic paradigm centred on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2030.
Author: Klaus Schwab
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119756138
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
Reimagining our global economy so it becomes more sustainable and prosperous for all Our global economic system is broken. But we can replace the current picture of global upheaval, unsustainability, and uncertainty with one of an economy that works for all people, and the planet. First, we must eliminate rising income inequality within societies where productivity and wage growth has slowed. Second, we must reduce the dampening effect of monopoly market power wielded by large corporations on innovation and productivity gains. And finally, the short-sighted exploitation of natural resources that is corroding the environment and affecting the lives of many for the worse must end. The debate over the causes of the broken economy—laissez-faire government, poorly managed globalization, the rise of technology in favor of the few, or yet another reason—is wide open. Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet argues convincingly that if we don't start with recognizing the true shape of our problems, our current system will continue to fail us. To help us see our challenges more clearly, Schwab—the Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum—looks for the real causes of our system's shortcomings, and for solutions in best practices from around the world in places as diverse as China, Denmark, Ethiopia, Germany, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Singapore. And in doing so, Schwab finds emerging examples of new ways of doing things that provide grounds for hope, including: Individual agency: how countries and policies can make a difference against large external forces A clearly defined social contract: agreement on shared values and goals allows government, business, and individuals to produce the most optimal outcomes Planning for future generations: short-sighted presentism harms our shared future, and that of those yet to be born Better measures of economic success: move beyond a myopic focus on GDP to more complete, human-scaled measures of societal flourishing By accurately describing our real situation, Stakeholder Capitalism is able to pinpoint achievable ways to deal with our problems. Chapter by chapter, Professor Schwab shows us that there are ways for everyone at all levels of society to reshape the broken pieces of the global economy and—country by country, company by company, and citizen by citizen—glue them back together in a way that benefits us all.
Author: Joseph E. Stiglitz
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620975726
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 450
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Book Description
Today's leading economists weigh in with a new "dashboard" of metrics for measuring our economic and social health "What we measure affects what we do. If we focus only on material well-being—on, say, the production of goods, rather than on health, education, and the environment—we become distorted in the same way that these measures are distorted." —Joseph E. Stiglitz A consensus has emerged among key experts that our conventional economic measures are out of sync with how most people live their lives. GDP, they argue, is a poor and outmoded measure of our well-being. The global movement to move beyond GDP has attracted some of the world's leading economists, statisticians, and social thinkers who have worked collectively to articulate new approaches to measuring economic well-being and social progress. In the decade since the 2008 economic crisis, these experts have come together to determine what indicators can actually tell us about people's lives. In the first book of its kind, leading economists from around the world, including Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Elizabeth Beasely, Jacob Hacker, François Bourguignon, Nora Lustig, Alan B. Krueger, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, describe a range of fascinating metrics—from economic insecurity and environmental sustainability to inequality of opportunity and levels of trust and resilience—that can be used to supplement the simplistic measure of gross domestic product, providing a far more nuanced and accurate account of societal health and well-being. This groundbreaking volume is sure to provide a major source of ideas and inspiration for one of the most important intellectual movements of our time.
Author: Matthew Kuperus Heun
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319128205
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 215
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Book Description
This book uses the metaphor “The economy is society's metabolism” as a springboard to develop a rigorous theoretical framework for a better system of national accounts which goes “Beyond GDP” and is relevant to the age of resource depletion. Society is entering a new era in which biophysical limits related to natural resource extraction rates and the biosphere's waste assimilation capacity are becoming binding constraints on mature economies. Unfortunately, the data needed for policy-makers to understand and manage economic growth in this new era are not universally available. All stakeholders need a new way to understand our economy in the context of the biosphere’s ability to provide essential natural capital, and we suggest that detailed information about materials, energy, embodied energy, and energy intensity should be routinely gathered, analyzed, and disseminated from a centralized location to provide markets and policymakers with a more comprehensive understanding of the biophysical economy. However, a firm theoretical foundation is needed before proceeding along this new path, which this book is intended to provide. After arguing that the stock of manufactured capital is an important driver of material and energy demands imposed upon the biosphere, a new accounting framework is derived from the laws of thermodynamics to reflect the fact that material and embodied energy accumulate within the capital stock of economic sectors. This framework extends the Energy Input-Output (EI-O) techniques first developed by Bullard, Herendeen, and others to estimate energy intensity of economic products. Implications from the new framework are discussed, including the value of economic metrics for policy-making, the need for physically-based rather than product-based EI-O formulations, a re-assessment of the concept of economic “growth,” and an evaluation of recycling, reuse, and dematerialization. The framework also provides an opportunity to assess an array of definitions for Daly's “steady-state economy” in relation to the ideal of a sustainable economy. The book ends with a list of steps to be taken in creating a more comprehensive system of national accounts: National accounting agencies worldwide should develop and maintain balance sheets of both natural and manufactured capital in addition to national income statements All stocks and inter-sector flows should be provided in physical as well as financial units In the US, the Bureau for Economic Analysis (BEA) should restart detailed Capital, Labor, Energy, Material, and Services (KLEMS) reporting National accounting agencies should routinely estimate the energy intensity of economic products, and all of the above should be estimated and disseminated on an annual basis.
Author: Éloi Laurent
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030678601
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 285
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Book Description
The purpose of this volume, bringing together key actors of the well-being community, including scholars and policy-makers, is to advance the understanding and undertaking of the well-being transition away from growth and toward resilience and sustainability, at a time when this progress has become a vital necessity. A decade after the publication of the Stiglitz Report (2009), alternative visions to GDP and growth, that flourished in the 1970s, have re-emerged from all corners of the world, at all levels of governance. Yet, GDP and growth remain very much dominant in defining public policies, influencing businesses and shaping imaginaries. This book moves forward on two urgent tasks that stand before us in order to make progress in the well-being transition: first, connecting well-being to sustainability in a consistent framework highlighting their complementarity, using health as a pivot; second, operationalizing well-being indicators, i.e. integrating them into policy at all levels of governance.
Author: Akbar Noman
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231550987
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 445
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Book Description
In recent years, concerns about the outcomes and nature of economic growth have given way to a new emphasis on its quality. This volume brings together prominent international contributors to consider a range of interrelated questions concerning the quality of growth in Africa, with a primary focus on sub-Saharan countries. Contributors discuss the measurement of growth, the transformations necessary to sustain it, and issues around equity and well-being. They consider topics such as the distribution of income gains from growth; the extent to which economic growth has resulted in improvements in employment, poverty, and security; structural transformations of the economy and diversification of the sources of growth; environmental sustainability; and management of urbanization. Offering both diagnoses and prescriptions, The Quality of Growth in Africa helps envision a future that goes beyond increasing GDP to ensuring that growth translates into advancements in well-being. Although the book focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, much of the contributors’ incisive analysis has implications for countries outside the region.
Author: Jean-Paul Fitouss
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1459617797
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 230
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Book Description
In February of 2008, amid the looming global financial crisis, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France asked Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, along with the distinguished French economist Jean Paul Fitoussi, to establish a commission of leading economists to study whether Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - the most widely used measure of economic activity - is a reliable indicator of economic and social progress. The Commission was given the further task of laying out an agenda for developing better measures. Mismeasuring Our Lives is the result of this major intellectual effort, one with pressing relevance for anyone engaged in assessing how and whether our economy is serving the needs of our society. The authors offer a sweeping assessment of the limits of GDP as a measurement of the well-being of societies - considering, for example, how GDP overlooks economic inequality (with the result that most people can be worse off even though average income is increasing); and does not factor environmental impacts into economic decisions.In place of GDP, Mismeasuring Our Lives introduces a bold new array of concepts, from sustainable measures of economic welfare, to measures of savings and wealth, to a ''green GDP.'' At a time when policymakers worldwide are grappling with unprecedented global financial and environmental issues, here is an essential guide to measuring the things that matter.
Author: Joseph E. Stiglitz
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 162097570X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
A bold agenda for a better way to assess societal well-being, by three of the world's leading economists and statisticians "If we want to put people first, we have to know what matters to them, what improves their well-being, and how we can supply more of whatever that is." —Joseph E. Stiglitz In 2009, a group of economists led by Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, French economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi, and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen issued a report challenging gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of progress and well-being. Published as Mismeasuring Our Lives by The New Press, the book sparked a global conversation about GDP and a major movement among scholars, policy makers, and activists to change the way we measure our economies. Now, in Measuring What Counts, Stiglitz, Fitoussi, and Martine Durand—summarizing the deliberations of a panel of experts on the measurement of economic performance and social progress hosted at the OECD, the international organization incorporating the most economically advanced countries—propose a new, "beyond GDP" agenda. This book provides an accessible overview of the last decade's global movement, sparked by the original critique of GDP, and proposes a new "dashboard" of metrics to assess a society's health, including measures of inequality and economic vulnerability, whether growth is environmentally sustainable, and how people feel about their lives. Essential reading for our time, it also serves as a guide for policy makers and others on how to use these new tools to fundamentally change the way we measure our lives—and to plot a radically new path forward.
Author: Dirk Philipsen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691166528
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 410
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Book Description
"In one lifetime, GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, has ballooned from a narrow economic tool into a global article of faith. It is our universal yardstick of progress. As The Little Big Number demonstrates, this spells trouble. While economies and cultures measure their performance by it, GDP ignores central facts such as quality, costs, or purpose. It only measures output: more cars, more accidents; more lawyers, more trials; more extraction, more pollution--all count as success. Sustainability and quality of life are overlooked. Losses don't count. GDP promotes a form of stupid growth and ignores real development.How and why did we get to this point? Dirk Philipsen uncovers a submerged history dating back to the 1600s, climaxing with the Great Depression and World War II, when the first version of GDP arrived at the forefront of politics. Transcending ideologies and national differences, GDP was subsequently transformed from a narrow metric to the purpose of economic activity. Today, increasing GDP is the highest goal of politics. In accessible and compelling prose, Philipsen shows how it affects all of us. But the world can no longer afford GDP rule. A finite planet cannot sustain blind and indefinite expansion. If we consider future generations equal to our own, replacing the GDP regime is the ethical imperative of our times. More is not better. As Philipsen demonstrates, the history of GDP reveals unique opportunities to fashion smarter goals and measures. The Little Big Number explores a possible roadmap for a future that advances quality of life rather than indiscriminate growth."--
