 The Role of Technological Progress in Testing Adjusted Net Savings: Evidence from OECD CountriesRui Pedro Mota and Maria A. Cunha-e-Sá Ecological Economics, 2019, vol. 164, issue C, - Abstract: In this paper we investigate the relationship between comprehensive measures of savings and changes in future consumption in OECD countries. This relationship is at the basis of the interpretation of adjusted net savings as a weak sustainability indicator, and so, evidence of its validity provides support to the use of this indicator. We construct various measures of comprehensive savings for 20 OECD countries to include depletion from non-renewable resources, human capital investment and technological progress. Given their importance, especially for rich countries, we focus on the role of technical progress and human capital, in the form of changes in education level. We do not find strong evidence in favor of including green adjustments in the conventional net savings. However, we find compelling evidence for the inclusion of technological progress. Since this involves a forward looking term, the above result suggests that to construct an indicator of weak sustainability from conventional net savings, some estimate of future technological progress is needed. Keywords: Adjusted net savings; Indicators of weak sustainability; Technological progress; Comprehensive accounting (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:164:y:2019:i:c:11 DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106382 Access Statistics for this article Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier |
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