Economic theory predicts that the current change in national wealth, broadly defined to include natural and human capital as well as produced capital ("genuine savings"), determines whether the present value of future changes in consumption is positive or negative. Theoretical research has...

Economic theory predicts that the current change in national wealth, broadly defined to include natural and human capital as well as produced capital ("genuine savings"), determines whether the present value of future changes in consumption is positive or negative. Theoretical research has...

Existing wealth estimates show that in most countries intangible capital is the largest share of total wealth. Intangible capital is calculated as the difference between total wealth and tangible (produced and natural) capital. This paper uses new estimates of total wealth, natural capital, and...

The authors analyze the determinants of fatalities in 2,194 large flood events in 108 countries between 1985 and 2008. Given that socioeconomic factors can affect mortality right in the aftermath of a flood, but also indirectly by influencing flood frequency and magnitude, they distinguish...

Recent carbon market prices are substantially lower than mean or median estimates of the social cost of carbon in the literature. Intuition would therefore suggest that 'investment errors' are being made, in the sense that markets favor higher carbon-emitting projects, while global welfare would...

Since income is the return on wealth, the total wealth of any given country should be on the order of 20 times its gross domestic product. Instead the average observed ratio from the balance sheet accounts of the System of National Accounts is a factor of 2.6 to 6.6, depending on whether natural...

Biodiversity, a property of natural areas, provides a range of benefits to the economy including bioprospecting rents, knowledge and insurance, ecotourism fees, and ecosystem services. Many of these values can be broken out in the System of National Accounts, leading to better estimates of the...

Questions about the ultimate size of mineral and energy resource endowments and the degree of fiscal prudence which should be exercised by countries engaged in resource extraction have become central for many developing countries during the recent resource boom. To explore these questions, this...