Genuine Savings as an Indicator for “Weak” Sustainability: Critical Survey and Possible Ways forward in Practical Measuring

Adrian Boos
Additional contact information
Adrian Boos: Institute for Food and Resource Economics, University of Bonn, Nußallee 21, 53115 Bonn, Germany

Sustainability, 2015, vol. 7, issue 4, 1-37

Abstract: Published by the World Bank (as “Adjusted Net Savings”) for around 160 countries, Genuine Savings (GS) presents the most respected but also the most debated indicator for “weak” sustainability. It originates from the so-called “Hartwick rule” for the re-investment of rents from the depletion of natural in reproducible forms of capital. Coming from the theoretical reasoning behind GS, this paper discusses possible extensions either not yet discussed or underrepresented in current research. Mainly, I suggest a discussion of additional items that could be included in GS and show that both the global average and individual country levels of GS would change immensely by including these recommendations.

Keywords: genuine savings; adjusted net savings; sustainable development; weak sustainability; substitution; physical capital; human capital; natural capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/7/4/4146/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/7/4/4146/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:7:y:2015:i:4:p:4146-4182:d:48005

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().