Measuring the immeasurable: a survey of substainability indices

Christoph Böhringer and Patrick Jochem

No 06-073, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: Sustainability indices for countries provide a one-dimensional metric to valuate country-specific information on the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, environmental, and social conditions. At the policy level, they suggest an unambiguous yardstick against which a country?s development can be measured and even a cross-country comparison can be performed. This paper reviews the explanatory power of various sustainability indices applied in policy practice. We show that these indices fail to fulfill fundamental scientific requirements making them rather useless if not misleading with respect to policy advice.

Keywords: Sustainability Indices; Composite Indicators; Sustainability; Indices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C43 Q01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
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Related works:
Journal Article: Measuring the immeasurable -- A survey of sustainability indices (2007)
Working Paper: Measuring the Immeasurable: A Survey of Sustainability Indices (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5466

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