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A General Approach to Welfare Measurement through National Income Accounting *
Author(s) -
Asheim Geir B.,
Buchholz Wolfgang
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.725
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1467-9442
pISSN - 0347-0520
DOI - 10.1111/j.0347-0520.2004.00362.x
Subject(s) - economics , national accounts , welfare , measures of national income and output , value (mathematics) , national income and product accounts , microeconomics , public economics , macroeconomics , mathematics , statistics , market economy
A framework is developed for analyzing national income accounting using a revealed welfare approach that is sufficiently general to cover, both the standard discounted utilitarian and maximin criteria as special cases. We show that the basic welfare properties of comprehensive national income accounting, previously ascribed only to the discounted utilitarian case, extend to this more general framework. In particular, under a wider range of circumstances, it holds that real NNP growth (or, equivalently, a positive value of net investments) indicates welfare improvement. We illustrate the applicability of our approach in the Dasgupta–Heal–Solow model of capital accumulation and resource depletion.