Traditional GDP Research Articles

Aproximación al cálculo del crecimiento real de Colombia: aportes metodológicos para la inclusión en las cuentas nacionales de los impactos del agotamiento del carbón y del gas natural

The integrated accounting system considers the natural resource depletion issues. We analyze the difference between this system and the traditional national accounting system, using data from the mining sector in Colombia (natural gas and coal). Results show that by including the impact of these two resources exhaustion, the traditional GDP would be overestimated; while it grew at an annual rate of 2.2% for the period 1995-2005, adjusted GDP would show a grow rate of 1.3%, reflecting costs on real country growth. These results open a debate given the current proposal of basing part of economic growth in Colombia on mining.

Freedom-Based Measurement of Living Standard

This paper contrasts conventional real GDP and price indicators of living standard, interpreted as revealing information on welfare , with others, that aim at reflecting individual freedom. It is argued that freedom-based indices are easier to use and interpret than traditional real GDP ones. Illustrations of the differences between the two classes of indices are provided for international comparisons, as well as for the evaluation of growth and inflation in France.*

The Historical Oil Rent in the Mexican Economy 1938-2001

This study has reviewed and expanded the main calculations and analysis of the paper written by Dr. Mar Rubio which studied the adjustment of the traditional GDP of Mexico, published in 1998 by the Economic History Deparment of LSE.This paper improved the work of Dr. Mar Rubio in two directions:(1）Provided a different result about this question. 2）Gived a more clear and more reasonable process to analyze and calculate these economic problem.The rent issue of a resource sector has been an important question in developing countries. The scale of natural resource rent decides the distribution structure of one country.

Understanding the New Service Economy: Economics, Technology and Risk Management

Much has been reflected on the phenomenon of the so-called new economy that has reinforced global co-operation (globalization), challenged traditional business models (Schumpter's destructive creativity), pushed productivity and GDP growth rates in certain regions in the world to higher levels than in the proceeding two decades and resulted in much hyped new evaluation models forjudging the value of modern companies. At the root of this phenomenon lies the better understanding of how technology drives the economy, how the new economics allow us to use the right ingredients and processes to create more wealth, and how all this can be managed more efficiently when examining the risks involved. Unfortunately, many of the approaches to the new economy are just the same old ideas wrapped in new clothes: after all, it is reasoned, the new economy is the same as the old, only that the objects of interest are becoming (or have become) immaterial. We can hence apply the same logic to what is going on nowadays, provided that we adjust a little bit here and there. Yet the authors are convinced that this is not an adequate approach. We will explain our understanding about the real forces of the new economy, naming it consequently the new Service Economy, and the role that economics and technology play together with the need for a modern comprehensive risk management.

The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) for Italy

We try to build a macroeconomic index, that includes some non-market variables, to be compared to the traditional GDP. Over the last twenty years answers to the accounting problem have been different. Economists have used dynamic optimization to rigorously derive an index that can be used to evaluate small projects and their contribution to well being. National Accountants are trying to extend the System of National Accounts (SNA) in the form of satellite accounts by increasing the system boundary. There is also a number of other studies which cannot be included in either of the previous categories and that we may call indices of welfare. They are not rigorously founded and start from common sense ideas of what should and what should not be considered as determinants of well being. This type of indices, however, has received wide attention thanks to their immediate comparability with GDP and to their characteristic of emphasizing the long run trend of welfare as compared to GDP. Our work falls in the third category. We start from the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) built up by Cobb and Daly in 1989 and we reproduce it for Italy, though revisiting the methodology associated to the construction of some of the variables. The results show that up to the seventies the Italian GDP only slightly overestimates the growth of economic welfare, but since then it seems to have been misleading, at least as compared to our index. While GDP has continued to rise, economic has been stagnating. The importance of the environmental variables included seems to be decreasing over time, going from 38% in 1980 to 31% in 1990. The cost of pollution (air, water and noise) has a greater weight in the sixties (about 13%) and falls to 8% in 1990. The ratio between GDP and environmental degradation has remained constant over the decades under consideration, thus contradicting the idea that the demand for environmental quality increases with income.