@inproceedings{8572118,
  abstract     = {{In 1989, Daly and Cobb compiled an inclusive measure of economic welfare (MEW): the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare. This indicator looks at the costs and benefits of a physically expanding US economy (including the welfare losses from income inequality and the sacrifice of the ecosystem’s source, sink and life-support services). If the marginal costs of expanding the economic scale exceed its marginal benefits, the measure would reveal that the optimal macroeconomic scale has been surpassed, and that the so-called ‘economic’ GDP growth has become uneconomic. As a consequence, the MEW would highlight the economic need to stop continued physical expansion and the importance of initiating a degrowth transformation toward a qualitatively improving steady-state economy prioritizing welfare/well-being, social justice and ecological sustainability. Daly and Cobb (2007) believed a conservatively estimated measure exposing the divergence between welfare and GDP would debunk the latter as a policy guide. However, even though most welfare studies do indeed find evidence in favor of costs outweighing the benefits of GDP growth in many countries, regions and cities, economies today are still trapped in a growth narrative. The lack of methodological standardization in the different MEW-studies to date has been identified as a major barrier for these measures to impact policy-making (Bleys & Whitby, 2015). 
In this conceptual paper, we explore welfare measures’ cross-time and cross-boundary effects and we observe that authors treat these issues in different ways. Some scholars look within domestic borders in line with the System of National Accounts, while others broaden their scope by looking at the impacts and costs domestic economic activity causes beyond national boundaries just as ecological footprints do. Moreover, two distinct welfare interpretations are detected as well, each having a different time perspective. Some studies are calculated from a current welfare interpretation, indicating the welfare level a nation’s citizens are experiencing at this moment. As such, future costs are not included. However, in the cost-benefit interpretation future costs are included. Here, the costs and benefits of our present economic activity should be including future costs and benefits. 
Because of these diverse perspectives, it is problematic that: (1) authors generally do not explicitly mention which interpretation or which time and boundary perspective they take, and (2) scholars sometimes make inconsistent choices when dealing with time and transboundary perspectives. Therefore, it is difficult to compare findings across countries. These possible viewpoints do, however, not have to compete against each other as they can (and should) be regarded as complements, each visualizing alternative economic viewpoints. Depending on the purpose of the exercise the appropriate time and boundary dimensions might be different. For instance, in order to determine whether GDP growth has become uneconomic, it is advisable to factor in the costs (and benefits) caused by the present economic activity but shifted to the future and beyond the own jurisdictional boundaries. 
By explicitly stating the viewpoint(s) taken, i.e. mentioning whether the indicator is a cost-benefit analysis or measuring current welfare, and declaring whether the compilation has a within or beyond boundary perspective, practitioners would stimulate standardization. This standardization would provide decision makers with better economic information, what would help to impact policy-making and to break GDP’s dominance. As such, calls made for degrowth are defended by the results of inclusive welfare measures as they offer building blocks and empirical arguments for a compelling degrowth case.

References
Bleys, B., & Whitby, A. (2015). Barriers and Opportunities for Alternative Measures of Economic Welfare. Ecological Economics, 117, 162-172.
Daly, H. E., & Cobb Jr, J. B. (2007). ISEW. The 'Debunking' Interpretation and the Person-in-Community Paradox: Comment on Rafael Ziegler. Environmental Values, 16(3), 287-288.}},
  author       = {{Van der Slycken, Jonas and Bleys, Brent}},
  keywords     = {{Measures of Economic Welfare (MEW),Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW),Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI),Ecological Economics,optimal macroeconomic scale,beyond GDP}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  location     = {{Malmö}},
  title        = {{Cross-time and cross-boundary effects of physically expanding economies in measures of economic welfare}},
  url          = {{https://malmo.degrowth.org/}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}