Traditional Economic Measures Research Articles

Triple Bottom Line, Sustainability, and Economic Development: What Binds Them Together? A Bibliometric Approach

The importance given to sustainable development paved the way for the development of the triple bottom line (TBL) concept. TBL is vital for the assessment of nations’ economic development (ED) beyond traditional economic measures. Despite this relevance, few studies still seek to deepen our understanding of the interaction between TLB and ED. Thus, this bibliometric study aimed to analyse the relationship between TBL, sustainability, and ED, adding business strategy concepts such as competitiveness, decision making, planning, and performance. We intended to reinforce the extension of TBL’s dominant rhetoric to sustainable ED. The results revealed the relationship between TBL and ED and allowed the identification of four clusters, from which a theoretical–conceptual model of the theory and application of TBL to achieve ED was formulated. This model can be adopted for the consolidation of ED through the TBL framework and as a tool to support business strategy related to obtaining competitive advantage; decision making; planning; and stimulating economic, social, and environmental performance.

“I want it all”: exploring the relationship between entrepreneurs’ satisfaction with work–life balance, well-being, flow and firm growth

Drawing from the conservation of resources theory, we explore how two personal resources (satisfaction with work–life balance and experience of flow at work) contribute to two important outcomes in entrepreneurship: entrepreneurs’ subjective well-being and firm growth. Although previous research has emphasized the importance of personal factors for firm growth and explored a variety of factors affecting entrepreneurs’ subjective well-being, little attention has been paid to the role of satisfaction with work–life balance as a critical personal resource for entrepreneurs. With this study, we find that entrepreneurs’ satisfaction with work–life balance is positively associated with subjective well-being, which, in turn, mediates the relationship between satisfaction with work–life balance and firm growth. Our study also shows that experiencing flow at work accentuates the relationship between satisfaction with work–life balance and subjective well-being. Based on our findings, we offer implications for practicing entrepreneurs in terms of how to achieve higher levels of well-being and better firm growth. Specifically, we emphasize the benefits of achieving satisfaction with work–life balance, as this is important for an entrepreneur’s subjective well-being and has an indirect impact on firm growth. Stakeholders in entrepreneurial ecosystems should embrace subjective well-being as an important indicator of firm outcomes alongside traditional economic measures.

Analyzing the outcomes of government-led poverty reduction policy – the case of 32 counties in southwestern china

Despite the precipitous economic development in China since it adopted the open-door policy in 1978, the issue of regional economic disparity remains to be a notable macroeconomic and social challenge in the 21st century. The Chinese government has allocated large amounts of resources to promote economic development and to reduce economic disparity over the past few decades. This study attempts to better understand the effectiveness and efficiency of the Chinese government's poverty reduction policy in the Sichuan Tibetan region, a remote area with a severe economic disparity issue in China. Using the exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) method, the present study first categorized the 32 counties in the studied Sichuan Tibetan region into four clustering groups. Further, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method was applied to examine relative efficiency performance at the county level over the 2000-2007 period. A unique feature of the present study is that it incorporates both the ESDA and DEA techniques to assess not only economic outcomes (i.e., GDP per capita) but also the degree of relative efficiency for each subset of the spatial area. Our findings suggest that the clustering outcomes from the ESDA method are consistent with the relative efficiency evaluations from the DEA approach overall. However, at an individual county level, we found that some counties in the low-level economic performance groups outperform the counties in high-level economic performance groups in terms of efficiency performance. These findings reveal that the economic performance variable, such as GDP per capita, does not comprehensively reflect an individual county's level of relative efficiency performance and each clustering group has a non-balanced efficiency performance pattern. Empirical findings and the methods employed in this study could be of help to government agencies and regional economics scholars when they evaluate the efficiency of a policy or a program across various geographic areas through effective benchmarking comparisons. We also recommend both traditional economic measures and scale efficiency outcomes should be considered when a local government's overall economic performance is evaluated. Besides, government officials should pay more attention to the decision-making units and attempt to find factors underlying the non-balanced efficiency performance pattern.

TOOLS FOR FINANCING ECOSYSTEM-BASED ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE

The article aims to determine the "portfolio" of financing ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change based on the analysis of traditional market instruments used to preserve, maintain and restore ecosystem services and biodiversity. The definition of ecosystem-based adaptation, its qualification criteria and elements of their application in contrast to traditional economic measures for biodiversity and nature conservation are revealed. The relevance of using ecosystem and nature-based approaches to adapt to climate change and reduce the risk of natural disasters given the increasing frequency of extreme weather events associated with climate change – severe droughts, floods, heatwaves, storms and other hazards are explored. Accordingly, the urgency of adaptation to climate-related risks and hazards in different economic sectors, e.g. agriculture, land use, fisheries, and natural components with a focus on the climate impacts prognosis for the European region, using effective and affordable measures with additional long term social and environmental benefits are explained. Trends and specific gaps in the international experience in financing climate adaptation measures are considered. The most common instruments for financing nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change, which are already used in world practice or have the potential of their practical implementation in various sectors, including environmental and carbon taxes, subsidies, tradable environmental permits, risk insurance, obligations, debt and equity instruments, as well as innovative forms of green loans, green bonds, and climate-related insurance types are systematized and represented. The specifics of financing such measures through international funds, development banks and European Union funds are considered. Possibilities of integrating financing of ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change to the current processes of climate change adaptation policy development of Ukraine, particularly in the context of performance of obligations under the Paris climate agreement, are considered.

Problems and Development Prospects of Public-Private Entrepreneurship

The presented study addresses the problems of interaction between the public (government) and private sectors in the process of social reproduction. Evolution of the mechanism, models, and forms of public-private entrepreneurship has led to the widespread use of public-private partnerships (PPP) based on the utilization of innovation and investment resources of the business to solve economic and social problems. Economic restructuring spurred by digitalization, the pandemic, the shifting balance of power in the world, departure from unilateralism, financialization of economies, and globalization of economic crises decrease the productivity of traditional economic regulation measures taken by the government. Thus, it becomes obvious that further development of public-private partnerships requires enhanced public monitoring using cloud-based information systems, together with updated legislation in this area and new management personnel. The government should encourage innovations in the development of public-private entrepreneurship forms and facilitate interaction with business structures in the context of national and local budget deficit. These measures will help to improve the rate and quality of economic growth in Russia and transition to the sixth wave of innovation. Aim. The study aims to show the genesis and mechanism of interaction between public authorities and business structures and its role in economic development; analyze major forms of public-private entrepreneurship; identify problems and propose recommendations for improving government-business interaction within the framework of public-private partnerships in the context of slower economic growth and the government’s limited ability to implement large-scale investment projects, including in the social sphere. Tasks. The authors analyze the development of public-private entrepreneurship in Russia and across the world, highlighting the features and models of such interaction; examine the legislative features and mechanisms of public-private entrepreneurship; identify problems and opportunities for the successful implementation of government-business interaction in the investment sphere of the Russian Federation. Methods. This study is based on the historical and logical approach, systems analysis, critical examination of scientific literature in relation to the adopted legislation, elements of complex analysis, modeling of interaction processes between public institutions and business structures. Results. The authors prove that by enhancing the interaction between business structures and the government through the development of public-private partnerships in the creation and operation of infrastructure, information technologies, and the social sphere, it will be possible to increase the rate of economic growth, to reduce the burden on the national budget in the context of economic stagnation and recession, and to secure the government’s obligations in the social sphere. The proposed recommendations for improving public-private entrepreneurship include improving the quality of the legal framework regulating the type of partnership, improving its information infrastructure, having a targeted strategy and tactics for the development of public-private entrepreneurship at the national, regional, and municipal level, as well as developing managerial competencies in the field of public-private entrepreneurship process management. Conclusions. The study substantiates the need to form and train efficient project teams, whose tasks should include competent support of a PPP project at all stages, from concept definition to implementation, and using the infrastructure mortgage principle and public control in public-private partnership.

Optimism and pessimism: A cross‐country comparison

AbstractOptimism and pessimism influence economic choices. If consumers are optimistic, they tend to spend a greater proportion of their budget shares on luxuries and a lesser proportion on necessities. Many models of consumer expenditure do not take into account the influence of optimism and pessimism. This paper demonstrates a way to indirectly measure optimism and pessimism by focusing on patterns in Engel curve residuals for necessities and luxuries. Using the revised International Comparison Program (ICP) 2005 data covering 144 countries, this paper presents economy‐wide optimism and pessimism indicators. These indicators provide a useful complement to traditional economic measures of standard of living such as real gross domestic product (GDP) in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. These indicators are non‐economic in traditional terms. However, since they are constructed as residuals from an economic analysis, they could act as a very useful complement to traditional economic indicators and, as such, may be termed “quality of life” indicators.

The social value of investing in public health across the life course: a systematic scoping review

BackgroundMaking the case for investing in public health by illustrating the social, economic and environmental value of public health interventions is imperative. Economic methodologies to help capture the social value of public health interventions such as Social Return on Investment (SROI) and Social Cost-Benefit Analysis (SCBA) have been developed over past decades. The life course approach in public health reinforces the importance of investment to ensure a good start in life to safeguarding a safe, healthy and active older age. This novel review maps an overview of the application of SROI and SCBA in the existing literature to identify the social value of public health interventions at individual stages of the life course.MethodsA systematic scoping review was conducted on peer-reviewed and grey literature to identify SROI and SCBA studies of public health interventions published between January 1996 and June 2019. All primary research articles published in the English language from high-income countries that presented SROI and SCBA outputs were included. Studies were mapped into stages of the life course, and data on the characteristics of the studies were extracted to help understand the application of social value methodology to assess the value of public health interventions.ResultsOverall 40 SROI studies were included in the final data extraction, of which 37 were published in the grey literature. No SCBA studies were identified in the search. Evidence was detected at each stage of the life course which included; the birth, neonatal period, postnatal period and infancy (n = 2); childhood and adolescence (n = 17); adulthood (main employment and reproductive years) (n = 8); and older adulthood (n = 6). In addition, 7 studies were identified as cross-cutting across the life course in their aims.ConclusionThis review contributes to the growing evidence base that demonstrates the use of social value methodologies within the field of public health. By mapping evidence across stages of the life course, this study can be used as a starting point by public health professionals and institutions to take forward current thinking about moving away from traditional economic measures, to capturing social value when investing in interventions across the life course.

Constructing a Children’s Subjective Well-Being Index: an Application to Socially Vulnerable Spanish Children

It is well-known that traditional economic measures such as household income appear to play less of a role in explaining children’s subjective well-being than adults’. This paper focuses on the construction of a children’s well-being index taking into account subjective and emotional factors, such as children’s experiences of material deprivation and bullying, the quality of family relationships and with peers, the quality of services in their neighbourhood and personal well-being. The index is constructed from principal component analysis and rescaled to 0-100% for better interpretation. Data comes from a survey run in Spain in 2016 by the largest humanitarian organization involved in social programs in the country, covering socially vulnerable children aged 8-11, with around 2,900 respondents. The main findings are: (i) bullying makes the difference between children being moderate or completely unsatisfied with their lives; (ii) there is no a single Spanish region reaching satisfying well-being levels across all the components of the index. The methodology proposed for the construction of the index is general enough to be applied to general child population, regardless their social vulnerability condition or even country, adapting the questionnaire appropriately.

Work hazards and workers' mental health: an investigation based on the fifth European Working Conditions Survey.

Background:Workplace hazards are a significant source of health impairment for workers and of financial losses for firms. EU directives on workers’ health and safety standards significantly contributed to reduce reported occupational injuries, yet the incidence and prevalence of work-related mental illness is still very high.Objectives:We investigated the association between work-related hazards and individuals’ perceived mental health. We reviewed the existing evidence on the channels through which task-related factors, adverse agents and psychosocial factors are expected to affect workers’ health, with specific regard to mental health.Methods:We used data from the fifth wave of the European Working Conditions Survey, covering over 40,000 face-to-face interviews with workers in 34 countries, which includes information on socio-demographic characteristics, firms and jobs attributes, employment status, as well as working conditions and health status. We carried out an empirical analysis with multivariate regression models in order to estimate the relationship between workers’ mental health problems and workplace risk factors.Results:21,020 interviews were used in the multivariate analysis. We found strong correlations between hazards and various indicators of mental health. Among hazardous agents, low temperatures (β=0.0287) and contact with infectious materials (β=0.0394) were positively associated with mental health outcomes. Among task/sequence-related factors, tiring or painful positions (β=0.0713), repetitive hand/arm movements (β=0.0255), working with VDUs (β=0.0301), repetitive tasks <10 min (β=0.0859) and working in evenings (β=0.00754) were positively associated with mental health. Various psychosocial risk factors related to both the content of the job (for example, frequent disruptive interruptions: β=0.219, working in free time: β=0.0759, poor work-life balance: β=0.228) as well as the job context (for example, bad employment prospects: β=0.177, low decisional autonomy: β=0.245, bad social relations: β=0.186, workplace violence: β=0.411) were positively associated with mental health. The main results of the decomposition show that an important contribution to workers’ overall mental distress at work is associated with psychosocial risk factors (up to 60% for depression/anxiety symptoms and sleep disorders), while the contribution of somatic factors is on average lower (up to 20% for overall fatigue).Conclusions:We argue that action is needed to improve workers’ mental well-being, and reduce the economic costs for both the national health system and employers. Regulations and traditional economic measures are unlikely to prove successful in providing adequate standards of primary and secondary preventive measures in the work place without an appropriate and reliable Risk Assessment Procedure.

Corporate Short‐Termism and How It Happens

In this excerpt from his forthcoming book, A Cure for Corporate Short‐Termism, the author begins by noting that many corporate management teams “unwittingly foster a culture of short‐termism” that ends up reducing the long‐run value of their companies. Such a culture starts with the process that surrounds quarterly earnings, in which managers seek to “guide” and then beat the analysts' consensus for EPS. But even if the market seems to deal harshly with companies that “miss” consensus, the author's own research shows that when viewed over periods of a year or more, it is the changes in earnings and cash flows that drive returns for shareholders, and not management's consistency in meeting the analysts' expectations.What's more, this process of managing expectations—which the author calls “sandbagging”—goes on not only between companies and their investors, but also between corporate headquarters and the unit managers in annual budgeting that is often used to set incentive plan targets. According to the author, such sandbagging may be “the worst managerial behavior problem facing U.S. public companies.” Measuring managers' performance against plan as the basis for their bonuses gives them strong incentives to understate the expected profitability and growth of their businesses. And the predictable result is mediocre plans that can be easily beaten—not a prescription for outstanding performance.Compounding the problem, many companies these days focus heavily on improving returns on capital or equity, and other efficiency measures, and much less on growth. But as the author emphasizes, encouraging the managers of already high‐return businesses to increase or “maximize” their returns is a sure prescription for underinvestment. (After all, if you're already earning 40% on capital, taking on projects that are expected to earn anything less will reduce your average return—and with it your bonus.)The proposed solution—which is presented in detail in later chapters of the book—is a corporate performance measurement and reward system based on a measure of economic profit called “residual cash earnings,” or RCE, which is based on cash earnings less a capital charge on gross investment. Such a measure has the virtue of spreading the NPV out more smoothly over the life of an investment, which allows value‐creating investments to drive up the measure much more quickly than with traditional return and economic profit measures. And by tying their managers' bonuses to, say, annual increases in RCE, such a system can help companies accomplish a number of goals: (1) get more reliable budgets (by eliminating any incentive for sandbagging) from their unit managers; (2) encourage smaller capital requests from low‐return businesses, but larger requests from high‐return businesses; (3) limit the corporate tendency to succumb to “herding” and “recency bias,” as reflected in massive overinvestment at the tops of business cycles and far too little investment at the bottoms; and (4) create and reinforce a longer‐term focus and ownership culture of accountability in which managers throughout the organization participate in and assume responsibility for their decisions and performance.

City and Health: An Exploratory Overview of Research Issues

The bottom line of welfare on our planet and its people is not only dependent on traditional economic measures, but also on knowledge and education and – last but not least – on human health. Human health is a critical factor for the welfare and prosperity of society. Many parameters appear to play a role in a health equation, even though the empirical measurement of health is fraught with many conceptual and empirical problems. As a consequence, we observe many disparities in empirical health conditions in a heterogeneous society; an appropriate definition and measurement of 'good health' are far from easy. Next to health disparities caused by a heterogeneity among the population, there is also an important geographical component in the spread of health patterns of the population as a result of differences in environmental quality-of-life, spatial density, quality of and access to health care facilities, and social stress conditions. From this perspective, geography matters in the field of human health. Although geographic differences in health conditions are not the only reason for people to reside or stay in a certain place, they are certainly an important decision parameter, often in combination with wellness conditions and environmental quality conditions. The aim of the present paper is to provide an overview of the literature on the geography of health and wellness, while the study is concluded with some lessons for research and policy.Purpose: The aim of the present paper is to provide an overview of the literature on the geography of health and wellness.Methodology/Approach: Literature review. We will outline the geography of human health, through a concise literature survey of the geographical patterns in human health outcomes to address the general research findings on spatial differences in health in relation to urban-rural patterns of life.Findings: The measurement of human health is fraught with many difficulties, as it is often not clear whether a correction is made for supply factors (such as health care facilities) or for individual characteristics of the people concerned (such as age or gender). In the social-medical research literature this has led to an increasing popularity of meta-analytic methods.Research Limitation/implication: Meta-analysis may be seen as a collection of quantitative research techniques that aim at providing a synthesis of previously undertaken impact studies in a given field. Clearly, and ideally, both the response and the moderator variables would have to be identical, but in reality this is not the case. Besides, the quality of the research may be difficult (often reflected in the quality of the journal in which the results are published), while also the contextual conditions may be completely different (such as physical-geographical conditions or socio-economic or poverty conditions). This makes the results of meta-analytic studies somewhat ambiguous, but nevertheless it is a valuable method that may shed more light on the determinants of health outcomes.There is clearly a case for more detailed spatial data on individual health situations. There may be a self-selection (or sorting) mechanism in the locational decisions of households so that there is a need for a more systematic data collection and analysis in this area.Originality/Value of paper: The paper aims to unravel the various forces that determine human health, in particular from the spatial perspective of places of residence.

The evidence base for successful alliancing

Introduction: There is increasing recognition that collaborative and integrated working is needed to meet the challenges faced in UK health and care and other public funded services. Alliances and alliance contracts have generated interest as a possible tool that commissioners can use to drive collaboration. There are examples in healthcare from New Zealand and recent alliance developments in services in England.In adopting alliance methodologies for the context of public sector commissioning and provision it is imperative to consider the evidence for creating successful alliances. This literature review was undertaken to identify the key components.Theory/Methods: A literature search was conducted in the summer 2015 commencing with Google Scholar searches for variations on the word alliance and alliance contracts. The reference lists of papers identified and requests to specialists in alliancing yielded further materials.The literature was analysed to draw out the key components that influence successful outcomes in alliances.Results: The search revealed over 80 references relevant to performance in alliancing and alliance contracting.Alliances can take many forms and in the literature overall there is a dominant representation of project alliances as used for public service capital build projects (e.g. construction and infrastructure) and strategic alliances across industries often seen in the private sector. Next to these well-defined types of alliances variations have emerged to cater for particular needs.Alliance success is also broadly defined. Traditional economic measures and achievement of objectives are commonly used but other benefits are described including creation of new skills and capabilities, durable relationships and competitive advantage.Analysis to identify themes defined four interrelated dimensions to successful alliancing.a. Trust and loyalty between partiesTrust substitutes for hierarchical control. Partner selection and strategic, goal and incentive congruence are critical. Uncertainty about partner behaviour hinders the establishment of trust. Reducing the risk of partner opportunism requires attention to differences in economic benefits, cultural diversity and the time horizon for return on the investment for each partner.b. High quality decision making processesAlliances create a unique context for decision-making with unanimity and participatory processes. Appropriate governance arrangements are needed as well as trust and reciprocity between partners and the ability to employ various means to co-ordinate interactions and activities over time. Constraints are multiple decision making centres, uncertainty about partners, ambiguity about the evolution of the alliance and political and micropolitical actions.c. Alliance management capability and skillsThe multiparty context of alliances requires distinct skills for co-ordination of joint tasks, communication with sharing of relevant knowledge and information and a bonding process for social integration. Proactiveness and ability to modify the alliance activities over time are positive aspects. All these are self-reinforcing, building management effectiveness as experience grows. Challenges arise when there are divided authority structures, information asymmetries and underdeveloped personal relationships.d. Flexibility and dynamismAlliances are, by design, flexible and must evolve to accommodate contextual changes. The co-ordination, social norms, planning and capabilities must all reflect this and the leadership and management need to be able to function with ambiguity and uncertainty.Discussion: There was a wealth of material on performance in alliances and components of success from basic research, observational studies and enquiry and theoretical frameworks.The multitude of contexts, different meanings of alliances and definitions of success limits direct comparisons. However there are commonalities in findings and four themes emerge as critical for alliance success. These are trust and loyalty between parties, high quality decision making, alliance management capability and skills, flexibility and dynamism.The emphasis on partner selection, goal congruence and early relationship formative processes stands out. Specific focus needs to be given to creating trust, robust decision making, adequately resourced co-ordination and management and ensuring those in leadership and key management roles can operate with uncertainty and ambiguity so that they are able to flex and adapt as the alliance evolves.Conclusion: The interdependent four dimensions and the concepts within them provide those developing alliances in new environments with important lessons. Success does not happen by chance. Active management is required throughout the life cycle of an alliance to ensure there is a maximum chance of achieving success.We can now apply these findings to alliancing in health and care sectors. Although we focused on alliances specifically, they have relevance to all forms of collaborative and partnership working.

The Currency of Connections

Proponents of social capital theory have long argued that it is not only in the best interest of civic life to build social capital but that social capital is vital for the economic health of communities. Yet past studies have failed to distinguish among different types of social capital and have relied on inaccurate measures of economic health. This study reexamines what has become conventional wisdom by analyzing the social capital of American metropolitan areas and its impact on economic well-being. It improves on past studies by examining different types of social capital (i.e., trust, group membership, social networks) and substituting the change in competitive-advantage jobs from shift-share analysis for total job growth and other traditional economic development measures of wealth creation. The study finds that bridging social capital positively affects the economic welfare of communities with respect to job creation.

Economic evaluation of a kinetic-based copper[sbnd]chlorine (Cu[sbnd]Cl) thermochemical cycle plant

The three-step CuCl cycle plant is expected to be ready for commercialization due to less steps, less equipment, and less challenges to process solid particles. In the proposed three-step CuCl cycle, the compact layout is composed of O2 production unit, CuCl electrolysis unit and H2 production unit, solid CuCl2 is treated as the feed of hydrolysis reactor, and aqueous CuCl2 from the CuCl electrolyzer is not directly recycled. Using specific kinetics of hydrolysis and chlorination reactions, a kinetic-based three-step CuCl cycle plant provides feasible predictions of process optimization. To address the commercialization procedures, first a simple heat recovery scheme is added to improve the overall energy efficiency from 33.87% to 47.31%, and second the traditional economic measures such as net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR) are employed. The economic evaluation patterns show that the labor cost dominates the operating cost, the operating cost dominates the total cost of the plant, and the feedstock cost dramatically increases by scaling up the plant capacity. Under prescribed scenarios and optimal conditions, simulations show that the product costs of hydrogen and oxygen decrease by 99% and 91%, respectively, while the plant capacity increases from 3E6 kg/yr to 3E8 kg/yr.

The new world of retirement income security in America.

We have entered a new world of retirement income security in America, with older individuals more exposed to market risk and more vulnerable to financial insecurity than prior generations. This reflects an evolution that has altered the historical vision of a financially secure retirement supported by Social Security, a defined-benefit pension plan, and individual savings. Today, 2 of these 3 retirement income sources-pensions and savings-are absent or of modest importance for many older Americans. Retirement income security now often requires earnings from continued work later in life, which exacerbates the economic vulnerability of certain segments of the population, including persons with disabilities, the oldest-old, single women, and individuals with intermittent work histories. Because of the unprecedented aging of our society, further changes to the retirement income landscape are inevitable, but policymakers do have options to help protect the financial stability of older Americans. We can begin by promoting savings at all (especially younger) ages and by removing barriers that discourage work later in life. For individuals already on the cusp of retirement, more needs to be done to educate the public about the value of delaying the receipt of Social Security benefits. Inaction now could mean a return to the days when old age and poverty were closely linked. The negative repercussions of this would extend well beyond traditional economic measures, as physical and mental health outcomes are closely tied to financial security. (PsycINFO Database Record

National well-being policy and a weighted approach to human feelings

Governments are becoming interested in the concept of human well-being and how truly to assess it. As an alternative to traditional economic measures, some nations have begun to collect information on citizens' happiness, life satisfaction, and other psychological scores. Yet how could such data actually be used? This paper is a cautious attempt to contribute to thinking on that question. It suggests a possible weighting method to calculate first-order changes in society's well-being, discusses some of the potential principles of democratic ‘well-being policy’, and (as an illustrative example) reports data on how sub-samples of citizens believe feelings might be weighted.

Happiness and Wellbeing

Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Happiness as a concept seems to be readily embraced by the majority of people and appears to be more valued than the pursuit of money, moral goodness or going to heaven. Philosophers and religious thinkers often define happiness in terms of living a good life, or flourishing, rather than simply as an emotion. Happiness economics suggests that measures of public happiness should be used to supplement more traditional economic measures when evaluating the success of public policy. Happy people are healthy people. Happy people live longer and enjoy a greater quality of life. They function at a higher level, utilizing their personal strengths, skills, and abilities to contribute to their own well-being as well as that of others and society. Wellbeing is a contented state of being happy and healthy and prosperous. Psychological well-being refers to how people evaluate their lives. These evaluations may be in the form of cognitions or in the form of affect. The cognitive part is an information based appraisal of one’s life that is when a person gives conscious evaluative judgments about one’s satisfaction with life as a whole. Most people evaluate their life as either good or bad, so they are normally able to offer judgments. People invariably experience moods and emotions which have a positive effect or a negative effect. We can define psychological well-being in terms of internal experience of the respondent and their own perception of their lives. People have a level of subjective well-being even if they do not often consciously think about it, and the psychological system offers virtually a constant evaluation of what is happening to the person.

Social Capital and Metropolitan Economic Development

Proponents of social capital theory have long argued that it is not only in the best interest of civic life to build social capital but that social capital is vital for the economic health of communities. Yet past studies have failed to distinguish among different types of social capital and relied on inaccurate measures of economic health. This study reexamines what has become conventional wisdom by analyzing the social capital of American metropolitan areas and its impact on economic wellbeing. It improves upon past studies by examining different types of social capital (i.e. trust, group membership, social networks) and substituting the change in competitive advantage jobs from shift-share analysis for total job growth in addition to traditional economic development measures of wealth creation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to empirically test, and find significant, the long hypothesized importance of social capital in job creation at the level of the metropolitan economy. The study finds that bridging social capital positively impacts the economic welfare of communities with respect to job creation. The effect on job creation is substantial and equal to or exceeds that of many traditional factors related to urban economic growth. However, neither bridging nor bonding social capital is found to have an effect on per capita income change. Practitioners who attempt to create jobs through strategic planning, local public policy and economic development programs should incorporate bridging social capital to maximize the potential for success.

Quantifying Preferences for the Natural World Using Monetary and Nonmonetary Assessments of Value

Given that funds for biodiversity conservation are limited, there is a need to understand people’s preferences for its different components. To date, such preferences have largely been measured in monetary terms. However, how people value biodiversity may differ from economic theory, and there is little consensus over whether monetary metrics are always appropriate or the degree to which other methods offer alternative and complementary perspectives on value. We used a choice experiment to compare monetary amounts recreational visitors to urban green spaces were willing to pay for biodiversity enhancement (increases in species richness for birds, plants, and aquatic macroinvertebrates) with self-reported psychological gains in well-being derived from visiting the same sites. Willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates were significant and positive, and respondents reported high gains in well-being across 3 axes derived from environmental psychology theories (reflection, attachment, continuity with past). The 2 metrics were broadly congruent. Participants with above-median self-reported well-being scores were willing to pay significantly higher amounts for enhancing species richness than those with below-median scores, regardless of taxon. The socio-economic and demographic background of participants played little role in determining either their well-being or the probability of choosing a paying option within the choice experiment. Site-level environmental characteristics were only somewhat related to WTP, but showed strong associations with self-reported well-being. Both approaches are likely to reflect a combination of the environmental properties of a site and unobserved individual preference heterogeneity for the natural world. Our results suggest that either metric will deliver mutually consistent results in an assessment of environmental preferences, although which approach is preferable depends on why one wishes to measure values for the natural world.

Security and economic voting: support for incumbent parties in Colombian presidential elections

Theories of economic voting developed in the United States and Europe take security for granted. However, many countries in other regions of the world suffer from daily political violence. The Colombian experience suggests that additional sources of performance failure beyond traditional economic measures should be examined to understand support for incumbents. Colombia has suffered from political violence for decades. This paper examines whether or not political violence is a factor that should be taken into consideration when explaining support for incumbent parties. Given the peculiarities of its party system, accountability is not easy to assess in Colombia, so factors that may undermine the clarity of accountability are also examined. In addition to political violence, traditional economic voting variables such as unemployment, inflation, and gross domestic product (GDP) growth are included. Colombia has experienced varying intensities of political violence and differing economic conditions since the reforms that culminated in the 1991 constitution. We examine first round presidential elections in 1998, 2002 and 2006 to see if the theory of economic voting should be supplemented with violence to understand support for incumbent parties.