Evaluating a continent-wise situation for capital data

Abstract

This paper investigates the evolution of natural assets and the relationship among natural, produced and human capital, for selected countries of six continents during the 25-year period 1990–2014. The paper employs an alternative graphical data analysis to picture variations and evolution schemes in capital data formation. Our novel contribution is to feature the underlying consumption or restoration of natural capital in relation with intertemporal man-made capital dynamics. The proposed graphical approach (i) has the advantage of being self-evident, (ii) depicts comparative results surpassing the problem of different scaling of the data (iii) examines the interdependence of the three types of capital data (i.e. natural capital, gross fixed capital formation or labor). We aim to uncover each country’s environmental policy at a glance and draw conclusions concerning environmental sustainability.