Value and income

Robert Cairns

Ecological Economics, 2008, vol. 66, issue 2-3, 417-424

Abstract: This paper argues that income is a flow of value to society; therefore, an economic modeler's choice of a concept of value imposes a concept of income. The argument is used to distinguish three concepts of national income. (1) In a discounted-utilitarian model, which is usually the basis for theoretic discussions of net national income, the formulation of value imposes a concept of income that is not observable and hence does not provide income statistics. (2) In a perfectly competitive economy, national income is, in principle, observable. Study of the competitive model provides a theoretic foundation for national accounting, with extensions to distorted economies. However, two unobservable components of ideal income, consumers' surplus and capital gains, are perforce neglected. (3) A maximin program is the mathematical representation of another value, sustaining an economy. It employs a method of intertemporal valuation that does not involve discounting. Income is sustained value. Since a maximin program is not expressed for a distorted economy, there is no observable indicator of whether an economy is being sustained.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921-8009(07)00505-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:66:y:2008:i:2-3:p:417-424

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().