Proposed alternatives to GDP as a measure of social welfare or human progress are briefly evaluated. Four main categories are considered, namely ISEW and GPI based on corrections of GDP, sustainable or green(ed) GDP, genuine savings/investments and composite indexes. All these alternatives turn...

This paper reviews sustainability concepts and measures sustainability indicators in the context of a least developed country Nepal, and a developing country Thailand in order to judge the economy's performance with the use of natural resources and the environment. In both the country cases,...

Over the last few years, environmental issues have entered into policy design, particularly development and growth policies. Natural resources are considered necessary production inputs and environmental quality is considered a welfare determinant. The integration of environmental issues into...

We argue against the use of composite indices, such as the Human Development Index (HDI), in economic history. We show that the HDI can be interpreted as a formal representation of the analyst’s ethical system. We support our claim by introducing a new class of paternalistic social welfare...

A new index for measurement of the level of tertiary education in developing countries is constructed. This index shows the level of readiness of the new generation to function in a developed country. In other words, this indicator characterizes the degree of intimacy of knowledge and...

International development assistance from richer to poorer (“developing”) economies accounts for major flows of capital, human resources and technical assistance. While the net direction of these flows remains a topic of hot debate, there have been several barriers identified to the...

Drawing on recent research on allometric scaling and energy consumption, the present paper develops a nutrition-based efficiency wage model from first principles. The biologically micro-founded model allows us to address empirical criticism of the original nutrition-based efficiency wage model....