Beyond economic growth: the genuine progress of Hong Kong from 1968 to 2010

Claudio Delang and Yi Hang Yu

International Journal of Sustainable Development, 2014, vol. 17, issue 4, 387-402

Abstract: We estimate the Genuine Progress Indicator of Hong Kong from 1968 to 2010. We present the results for all items of the economic, environmental and social sub-indices, and compare these sub-indices to the GPI and the GDP. Our main finding is that while in other countries the GPI has been dropping (since the 1970s or 1980s in most Western countries) or has been stable (since the 1990s in many Asian countries), in Hong Kong the GPI has an upward trend throughout the study period. We have five explanations for this trend: 1) the economic restructuring that has taken place from the 1990s, when labour-intensive industries left Hong Kong for neighbouring China; 2) the fact that many of these relocated industries were heavily polluting, which results in the environmental costs shifting to China; 3) The lack of public financial support for declining industries and sectors that in other countries are heavily subsidised (e.g., farming), resulting in a more efficient use of public funds; 4) the small size of Hong Kong, which results in more efficient public investment, allows for lower taxation, and reduces the cost of transportation, among others; 5) the high investment in fixed capital formation, which increases the GPI.

Keywords: Genuine Progress Indicator; GPI; Hong Kong; threshold hypothesis; economic development; environmental development; social development; economic restructuring; environmental costs; public funds; efficient investment; lower taxation; transport costs; fixed capital formation. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=65326 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:ids:ijsusd:v:17:y:2014:i:4:p:387-402

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Sustainable Development from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().