Marc Fleurbaey (Researcher, CNRS, CERSES, ), Didier Blanchet (Head of the Department of General Economic Studies

Beyond GDP

Measuring Welfare and Assessing Sustainability

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Is GDP a good proxy for social welfare? Building on economic theory, this book confirms that it is not, but also that most alternatives to it share its basic flaw, i.e., a focus on specific aspects of people's lives without sufficiently taking account of people's values and goals. A better approach is possible.

---

Hinweis: Dieser Artikel kann nur an eine deutsche Lieferadresse ausgeliefert werden.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Oxford University Press Inc
• Seitenzahl: 336
• Erscheinungstermin: 9. Mai 2013
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 241mm x 166mm x 25mm
• Gewicht: 612g
• ISBN-13: 9780199767199
• ISBN-10: 019976719X
• Artikelnr.: 36691702

Autorenporträt

Marc Fleurbaey is the Robert E. Kuenne Professor of Economics and Humanistic Studies, Professor of Public Affairs and the University Center for Human Values

Inhaltsangabe

* Contents
* vii
* Preface ix
* Introduction: The four musketeers xi
* 1 A wealth of indicators 1
* 1.1 Introduction
* 1.2 A bird's eye view
* 1.3 Aggregating the non-aggregatable?
* 1.4 Correcting GDP
* 1.5 Sustainability assessment: weak or strong?
* 1.6 Coping with multidimensionality: dashboards
* 1.7 An overhanging question: how far can aggregation go?
* 2 Measuring sustainability
* 2.1 Introduction
* 2.2 Wealth and sustainable well-being
* 2.2.1 Discounting future streams of well-being?
* 2.2.2 From intertemporal well-being to sustainable consumption
* 2.3 The savings approach: a reference framework
* 2.3.1 Shifting the focus to sustainability : why?
* 2.3.2 Assessing sustainability in imperfect but predictable
economies.
* 2.3.3 An example
* 2.4 The savings approach: several pending problems
* 2.4.1 Monetization in practice
* 2.4.2 Behavioral indeterminacy or when 'weak' indicators can
* turn out too strong
* 2.4.3 Technological and normative uncertainties
* 2.4.4 An additional problem: the cross-national dimension of
* unsustainability
* 2.5 Conclusion: where to go from there?
* iii
* iv CONTENTS
* 3 A price for everything?
* 3.1 A revealed preference argument
* 3.1.1 The argument for an individual consumer
* 3.1.2 Extending the argument to social welfare through a
representative agent
* 3.1.3 Extending the argument to social welfare with an opti-
* mality assumption
* 3.2 A variant of the revealed preference argument
* 3.3 The theory of index numbers
* 3.3.1 An axiomatic approach
* 3.3.2 Approximating welfare changes
* 3.4 Decomposing welfare
* 3.4.1 A first decomposition, with the social expenditure function
* 3.4.2 A second decomposition, in terms of effeciency and equity
* 3.4.3 A new decomposition, based on Bergson curves
* 3.4.4 Another decomposition, for small variations
* 3.5 Specific problems with imputed prices and full income
* 3.6 Conclusion
* 4 Equivalent income, or how to value what has no price
* 4.1 Money-metric utility and equivalent income
* 4.2 Knock-out criticism?
* 4.2.1 Not welfarist enough
* 4.2.2 Too welfarist
* 4.2.3 Potentially regressive
* 4.2.4 Reference dependent
* 4.2.5 Arrow's coup de grâce
* 4.3 Fairness to the rescue
* 4.3.1 The equivalence approach in fair allocation theory
* 4.3.2 Arrow Independence is not compelling
* 4.3.3 References need not be arbitrary
* 4.3.4 The right dose of welfarism
* 4.3.5 Bundle dominance is unacceptable
* 4.3.6 Egalitarianism is demanding
* 4.4 Social welfare decomposition
* 4.5 Conclusion
* 5 Is happiness all that matters?
* 5.1 The Easterlin paradox: Have we been wrong for 70,000 years?
* 5.1.1 Bentham is back
* 5.1.2 The debate about subjective welfarism
* 5.1.3 Is happiness the ultimate goal?
* 5.1.4 The key objection to subjective scores
* 5.2 A theory of subjective well-being
* 5.2.1 A¿ects and judgments
* 5.2.2 The three problems of the respondent
* CONTENTS v
* 5.2.3 Heterogeneous and shifting standards
* 5.2.4 What do people care about?
* 5.2.5 Comparisons across preferences
* 5.3 Making use of happiness data
* 5.3.1 Proposed indicators
* 5.3.2 Putting äects in their place
* 5.3.3 Identi?cation problems
* 5.3.4 Can happiness data be improved?
* 5.4 Conclusion
* 6 Empowering capabilities
* 6.1 The capability approach
* 6.1.1 From basic needs to capabilities
* 6.1.2 Functionings, between 'opulence' and 'utility'
* 6.1.3 From functionings to capabilities
* 6.2 Capabilities as opportunities
* 6.2.1 Valuing sets
* 6.2.2 The relevant aspects of opportunities
* 6.2.3 Shaping opportunity sets
* 6.2.4 Equality against set valuation
* 6.2.5 Why capabilities?
* 6.3 The valuation issue
* 6.3.1 The intersection approach
* 6.3.2 Disagreement and respect for diversity
* 6.3.3 Implications of respect for personal preferences
* 6.4 Is the CA a separate approach?
* Conclusion: How to converge on a multiplicity
* Why synthetic indicators?
* Shortcuts and pitfalls
* Vices and virtues of monetary indicators
* A multiplicity of synthetic indicators
* Sustainability warnings
* A A theory of the reference for equivalent incomes
* A.1 The model
* A.2 Reference operators
* A.3 Non-market goods
* A.4 Market prices
* A.5 The household problem
* B Proofs 233
* B.1 A Paretian rank-dependent criterion
* B.2 Reference-price independence
* B.3 A simple proof of Arrow's theorem in an economic framework
* vi CONTENTS
* Bibliography