Neither dashboard nor 'mashup' indices: an empirical wealth approach as a pathway to a comprehensive measure of development

Emanuele Felice

No 2012_01, UHE Working papers from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Departament d'Economia i Història Econòmica, Unitat d'Història Econòmica

Abstract: The article is composed of two sections. The first one is a critical review of the three main alternative indices to GDP which were proposed in the last decades – the Human Development Index (HDI), the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), and the Happy Planet Index (HPI) – which is made on the basis of conceptual foundations, rather than looking at issues of statistical consistency or mathematical refinement as most of the literature does. The pars construens aims to propose an alternative measure, the composite wealth index, consistent with an approach to development based on the notion of composite wealth, which is in turn derived from an empirical common sense criterion. Arguably, this approach is suitable to be conveyed into an easily understandable and coherent indicator, and thus appropriate to track development in its various dimensions: simple in its formulation, the wealth approach can incorporate social and ecological goals without significant alterations in conceptual foundations, while reducing to a minimum arbitrary weighting.

Keywords: GDP; human development; sustainability; wealth; composite indicators (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B40 E01 I00 O10 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2012-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/estudis/2012/hdl_2072_195750/uhe2012_01.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

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:aub:uhewps:2012_01

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in UHE Working papers from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Departament d'Economia i Història Econòmica, Unitat d'Història Econòmica Edifici B, Campus UAB, 08193, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jesus Ramos-Martin ().