IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aub/uhewps/2012_09.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Beyond GDP: Methodological and measurement issues in redefining “wealth”

Author

Listed:
  • Giuseppe Munda

    (Departament d'Economia i d'Història Econòmica, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Abstract

In the last decades; a growing stock of literature has been devoted to the criticism of GDP as an indicator of societal wealth. A relevant question is: what are the perspectives to build, on the existing knowledge and consensus, alternative measures of prosperity? A starting point may be to connect well-being research agenda with the sustainability one. However, there is no doubt that there is a lot of complexity and fuzziness inherent in multidimensional concepts such as sustainability and well-being. This article analyses the theoretical foundations and the empirical validity of some multidimensional technical tools that can be used for well-being evaluation and assessment. Of course one should not forget that policy conclusions derived through any mathematical model depend also on the conceptual framework used, i.e. which representation of reality (and thus which societal values and interests) has been considered.

Suggested Citation

  • Giuseppe Munda, 2012. "Beyond GDP: Methodological and measurement issues in redefining “wealth”," UHE Working papers 2012_09, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Departament d'Economia i Història Econòmica, Unitat d'Història Econòmica.
    • Handle: RePEc:aub:uhewps:2012_09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.h-economica.uab.es/pdf/2012_09.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bouyssou, Denis, 1986. "Some remarks on the notion of compensation in MCDM," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 150-160, July.
    2. Anindya Banerjee & Massimiliano Marcellino & Igor Masten, 2005. "Leading Indicators for Euro‐area Inflation and GDP Growth," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 67(s1), pages 785-813, December.
    3. Laurens Cherchye & Wim Moesen & Tom Van Puyenbroeck, 2004. "Legitimately Diverse, yet Comparable: On Synthesizing Social Inclusion Performance in the EU," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(5), pages 919-955, December.
    4. Kenneth J. Arrow, 1997. "Invaluable Goods," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(2), pages 757-765, June.
    5. Cribari-Neto, Francisco & Jensen, Mark J. & Novo, Álvaro A., 1999. "Research In Econometric Theory: Quantitative And Qualitative Productivity Rankings," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(5), pages 719-752, October.
    6. Arrow, Kenneth J. & Dasgupta, Partha & Goulder, Lawrence H. & Mumford, Kevin J. & Oleson, Kirsten, 2012. "Sustainability and the measurement of wealth," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(3), pages 317-353, June.
    7. Barthelemy, J. P. & Guenoche, A. & Hudry, O., 1989. "Median linear orders: Heuristics and a branch and bound algorithm," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 313-325, October.
    8. Graciela Chichilnisky, 1996. "An axiomatic approach to sustainable development," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 13(2), pages 231-257, April.
    9. Kenneth J. Arrow & Herve Raynaud, 1986. "Social Choice and Multicriterion Decision-Making," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262511754, December.
    10. Cherchye, Laurens & Knox Lovell, C.A. & Moesen, Wim & Van Puyenbroeck, Tom, 2007. "One market, one number? A composite indicator assessment of EU internal market dynamics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 749-779, April.
    11. Denis Bouyssou & Jean-Claude Vansnick, 1986. "Noncompensatory and generalized noncompensatory preference structures," Post-Print hal-02920182, HAL.
    12. Giles Atkinson & Kirk Hamilton, 2007. "Progress along the path: evolving issues in the measurement of genuine saving," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 37(1), pages 43-61, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Emanuele Felice, 2016. "The Misty Grail: The Search for a Comprehensive Measure of Development and the Reasons for GDP Primacy," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 47(5), pages 967-994, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Giuseppe Munda, 2015. "Beyond Gdp: An Overview Of Measurement Issues In Redefining ‘Wealth’," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 403-422, July.
    2. Salvatore Greco & Alessio Ishizaka & Menelaos Tasiou & Gianpiero Torrisi, 2019. "On the Methodological Framework of Composite Indices: A Review of the Issues of Weighting, Aggregation, and Robustness," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 141(1), pages 61-94, January.
    3. Giuseppe Munda, 2012. "Intensity of preference and related uncertainty in non-compensatory aggregation rules," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 73(4), pages 649-669, October.
    4. Martinez-Alier, Joan & Munda, Giuseppe & O'Neill, John, 1998. "Weak comparability of values as a foundation for ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 277-286, September.
    5. Giuseppe Munda, 2012. "Choosing Aggregation Rules for Composite Indicators," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 109(3), pages 337-354, December.
    6. Fusco, Elisa, 2015. "Enhancing non-compensatory composite indicators: A directional proposal," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 242(2), pages 620-630.
    7. Greco, Salvatore & Ishizaka, Alessio & Tasiou, Menelaos & Torrisi, Gianpiero, 2019. "The Ordinal Input for Cardinal Output Approach of Non-compensatory Composite Indicators: The PROMETHEE Scoring Method," MPRA Paper 95816, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Giuseppe Munda, 2013. "On the Foundations of Well-Being Economics and Policy," UHE Working papers 2013_01, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Departament d'Economia i Història Econòmica, Unitat d'Història Econòmica.
    9. Greco, Salvatore & Ishizaka, Alessio & Tasiou, Menelaos & Torrisi, Gianpiero, 2021. "The ordinal input for cardinal output approach of non-compensatory composite indicators: the PROMETHEE scoring method," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 288(1), pages 225-246.
    10. Fabio Pammolli & Francesco Porcelli & Francesco Vidoli & Guido Borà, 2014. "La spesa sanitaria delle Regioni in Italia - Saniregio 3," Working Papers CERM 02-2014, Competitività, Regole, Mercati (CERM).
    11. Fabio Pammolli & Francesco Porcelli & Francesco Vidoli & Monica Auteri & Guido Borà, 2017. "La spesa sanitaria delle Regioni in Italia - Saniregio2017," Working Papers CERM 01-2017, Competitività, Regole, Mercati (CERM).
    12. Van Puyenbroeck, Tom & Rogge, Nicky, 2017. "Geometric mean quantity index numbers with Benefit-of-the-Doubt weights," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 256(3), pages 1004-1014.
    13. Tommaso Agasisti & Giuseppe Munda, 2017. "Efficiency of investment in compulsory education: An Overview of Methodological Approaches," JRC Research Reports JRC106681, Joint Research Centre.
    14. Bouyssou, Denis & Pirlot, Marc, 2009. "An axiomatic analysis of concordance-discordance relations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 199(2), pages 468-477, December.
    15. Giuseppe Munda, 2003. "Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation (SMCE)," UHE Working papers 2003_04, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Departament d'Economia i Història Econòmica, Unitat d'Història Econòmica.
    16. Govindan, Kannan & Jepsen, Martin Brandt, 2016. "ELECTRE: A comprehensive literature review on methodologies and applications," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 250(1), pages 1-29.
    17. Laurens CHERCHYE & Willem MOESEN & Nicky ROGGE & Tom VAN PUYENBROECK, 2009. "Constructing a knowledge economy composite indicator with imprecise data," Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven ces09.15, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven.
    18. Nick Hanley & Louis Dupuy & Eoin McLaughlin, 2015. "Genuine Savings And Sustainability," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 779-806, September.
    19. Lee H. Endress & James A. Roumasset & Christopher A. Wada, 2020. "Do Natural Disasters Make Sustainable Growth Impossible?," Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 319-345, July.
    20. Greco, Salvatore, 1997. "A new PCCA method: IDRA," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 98(3), pages 587-601, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Well-Being; Sustainability; Multi-Criteria Evaluation; Composite Indicators; Complexity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation
    • C44 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Operations Research; Statistical Decision Theory
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
    • Q01 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - Sustainable Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:aub:uhewps:2012_09. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 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: Jesus Ramos-Martin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/heuabes.html .

    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.