Summarized the debate in Italy, with the label “Beyond GDP” is almost as old as the economic discipline, or at least the national economic accounting. Angus Madison (“Monitoring the World Economy”, OECD 1995), who died recently, but certainly the largest specialist in the past six decades, has managed to rebuild the national economic accounting major (reconstruction, therefore, the global economic accounts) from 1830 or so. Before then, the techniques for collecting and processing data were not sufficient to allow even a rough estimate of what was produced and consumed in the economy of a country: it may concern that, according to the meticulous work of Madison, in 1830 more than 40 % of global GDP was produced and consumed in only two countries – China and India before the industrial revolution, in a world dominated by the economy of subsistence, it is natural that much of the production was for self consumption and, consequently, GDP was essentially the basis of population.
In my career, I was interested in technical / statistics related to national economic accounts only at the beginning of my career in the World Bank even then, many countries in Africa south of Sahara, subsistence agriculture accounted for about half of the GDP of a country and, consequently, the GDP was largely a function of population and of its production for own consumption (not always easy to estimate). In recent years, I returned to these themes as the implications for economic policy in countries with high levels of development and income that is technically and statistics.
In fact, there has developed a vast literature that has influenced a wide publications she also popular (though often inaccurate). Together, these two types (though very different) literature has fueled a debate in think tanks and foundations of political inspiration. This note aims to facilitate the understanding of some basic concepts as the current debate is likely to become confused. Is essentially one of the four aspects that has been applied to the debate: that of the ‘economics of happiness “that does not aspire to new statistical and accounting international conventions (which, like those currently followed in the jargon SEC-95, take a Utopian international agreement, preferably in the UN, which is a treaty ratified by some 200 parliaments), but merely additions to the current practice.
For an analysis of how “the economics of happiness” is combined with the debate “over GDP), I believe that all interested parties to read and meditate Fleurbaey Marc’s essay” Beyond the GDP: the Quest for a Measure of Social Welfare “, published in the December 2009 Journal of Economic Literature. It is, in my opinion, the most comprehensive review of available literature (300 titles), many of which are easily found on the main search sites on the economy. Fleurbaey builds taxonomy of the main strands of the debate:
a) first, the introduction of corrections to existing rules and practices of national economic accounting, a way not only impervious to the legal and organizational aspects to which we have referred, but also for technical difficulties such as those related statistics the “green accounting” and “accounting of impacts on future generations.” In short, the most promising additions relate to estimates of production and unpaid work and certain categories of consumption (not too dissimilar from those additions to the estimates of subsistence economy.
b) secondly, the school of thought that emphasizes the “empowerment”, is on the opportunities enjoyed by members of the community to which one tries to measure “gross domestic product expanded”. The concept of “empowerment” comes from the analysis of Marty Sen. on “new welfare economics”. Its application to national economic accounting, and “extended measure of GDP, has so far only produced a long list of problems (not only statistical but also of collective choice) to be solved. A road, then, long and steep.
c) Thirdly, the path of ‘synthetic indicators’, often adopted in the documents of the European Commission and carried out similar exercises in the early stages of economic planning in Italy in the Sixties. E ‘was revived, especially in France and Italy, but it locks into a solid economic theory and can easily lead to arbitrary conclusions.
d) Fourthly, the way of the ‘economics of happiness “, with special attention to the difficulties of comparing states of satisfaction of various groups in society. Despite its limitations, the ‘economics of happiness “has the advantage of connecting to various aspects of the” new welfare economics “all aimed at achieving a greater and better understanding of the distribution of preferences and values among various sections of society, courts you are working on for years and that, precisely because the analysis started several decades ago, can be a useful path to go “beyond GDP”.
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