Social fairness and sustainability of economic productivity

Economic productivity is a complex phenomenon that serves to highlight how efficient an economic process is. However, the existing paradigms for measuring productivity are not coherent, presenting us with a heterogeneous concept too scattered to prove significant for the policy makers. In this paper, we focus on the social implications of the economic development in our attempt to design an adequate measuring methodology able to capture the impact of the continuously growing productivity upon the quality of life in the selected countries. The research is based on statistical data provided by EU KLEMS, The World Bank, Eurostat and The New Maddison Project. The countries chosen for the empirical analysis belong to two groups: Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland and Sweden). The research is based on input-output indexes used to emphasize productivity, together with its social fairness component and its sustainability over time. The fundamental research hypothesis of this paper is whether the current economic productivity, socially adjusted by GINI, is sustainable. The secondary hypothesis is whether high levels of economic productivity represent a strong enough incentive to countervail the limited biocapacity of a country. The empirical analysis will answer both questions, highlighting the importance of the ecological reserves and the importance of addressing productivity also from a social and an environmental perspective, and not only the obsolete economic perspective.