Callisthenic Productivity. A Challenge for the Traditional Economic Productivity Indicators

Abstract

Measuring economic productivity is a challenging task, mainly because we cannot isolate completely the effects produced by individual inputs, nor can we measure precisely how their interaction affects the overall result. In this paper we will test a new way of measuring economic productivity at country level that takes into account also the social dimension and the sustainability over time - we call it callisthenic productivity. The indicator has been built by measuring economic productivity as a sum of labor and capital productivity, which afterwards we adjust by using the Gini coefficient, the human development index, the biocapacity and the ecologic footprint of consumption. The end result is not necessarily a better way to represent a country’s productivity, but rather a better way to compare the ability of countries to generate effective, reliable and sustainable economic productivity.