Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Application and use of the ISEW for assessing the sustainability of a regional system: A case study in Italy

Contents:

Author Info

  • Pulselli, Federico M.
  • Bravi, Mirko
  • Tiezzi, Enzo
Registered author(s):

    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.

    Download Info

    If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268111000333
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

    Bibliographic Info

    Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

    Volume (Year): 81 (2012)
    Issue (Month): 3 ()
    Pages: 766-778

    as in new window
    Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:81:y:2012:i:3:p:766-778

    Contact details of provider:
    Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo

    Related research

    Keywords: GDP; Economic growth; Welfare; Social and environmental pressures; Defensive expenditures; Tuscany;

    Find related papers by JEL classification:

    References

    No references listed on IDEAS
    You can help add them by filling out this form.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as in new window

    Cited by:
    1. Brent Bleys, 2013. "The Regional Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare for Flanders, Belgium," Sustainability, MDPI, Open Access Journal, vol. 5(2), pages 496-523, February.

    Lists

    This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:81:y:2012:i:3:p:766-778

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wendy Shamier).

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

    If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.