IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijsusd/v17y2014i4p387-402.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Beyond economic growth: the genuine progress of Hong Kong from 1968 to 2010

Author

Listed:
  • Claudio O. Delang
  • Yi Hang Yu

Abstract

We estimate the Genuine Progress Indicator of Hong Kong from 1968 to 2010. We present the results for all items of the economic, environmental and social sub-indices, and compare these sub-indices to the GPI and the GDP. Our main finding is that while in other countries the GPI has been dropping (since the 1970s or 1980s in most Western countries) or has been stable (since the 1990s in many Asian countries), in Hong Kong the GPI has an upward trend throughout the study period. We have five explanations for this trend: 1) the economic restructuring that has taken place from the 1990s, when labour-intensive industries left Hong Kong for neighbouring China; 2) the fact that many of these relocated industries were heavily polluting, which results in the environmental costs shifting to China; 3) The lack of public financial support for declining industries and sectors that in other countries are heavily subsidised (e.g., farming), resulting in a more efficient use of public funds; 4) the small size of Hong Kong, which results in more efficient public investment, allows for lower taxation, and reduces the cost of transportation, among others; 5) the high investment in fixed capital formation, which increases the GPI.

Suggested Citation

  • Claudio O. Delang & Yi Hang Yu, 2014. "Beyond economic growth: the genuine progress of Hong Kong from 1968 to 2010," International Journal of Sustainable Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 17(4), pages 387-402.
  • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijsusd:v:17:y:2014:i:4:p:387-402
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=65326
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Van der Slycken, Jonas & Bleys, Brent, 2020. "A Conceptual Exploration and Critical Inquiry into the Theoretical Foundation(s) of Economic Welfare Measures," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    2. Daniel Francisco Pais & Tiago Lopes Afonso & Ant nio Cardoso Marques & Jos A Fuinhas, 2019. "Are Economic Growth and Sustainable Development Converging? Evidence from the Comparable Genuine Progress Indicator for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Countries," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 9(4), pages 202-213.
    3. Bleys, Brent & Whitby, Alistair, 2015. "Barriers and opportunities for alternative measures of economic welfare," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 162-172.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijsusd:v:17:y:2014:i:4:p:387-402. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=25 .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.