@phdthesis{8698745,
  abstract     = {{Among economists it is widely acknowledged that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a poor indicator to measure social welfare or social progress. Yet paradoxically, to date, GDP is very influential in economics, public policy, politics, media and society. Therefore, voices have been raised to move beyond GDP and adopt alternative measures to evaluate economic performance. The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) and the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) are leading indicators within Ecological Economics that have been calculated since 1989. Prior research struggled how to best capture economic welfare. First, there is some confusion on whether these indicators are measuring either current welfare or sustainability, or a combination of both. Second, different views exist on how these alternative indicators should account for cross-time and cross-boundary issues such as climate change, which is an item that brings enormous costs that are shifted in time and space.

This dissertation contributes to the debate of welfare measurement by highlighting these indicators are macroeconomic monetary welfare measures that account for the benefits and costs of economic activity. They do so by valuing the contributions from unpaid work, the market, state and shadow economy as they are all different means to satisfy people’s needs and wants. Furthermore, the social and ecological costs caused by the economic process are also included, since these indicators see the economy as embedded in society and in the Earth System. As a consequence, alternative measures of economic welfare are potentially capable of guiding economies and societies on a just transition toward living well within limits by providing an alternative to move beyond GDP. 

Chapter 1, A Conceptual Exploration and Critical Inquiry into the Theoretical Foundation(s) of Economic Welfare Measures, investigates the time and boundary complexity involved when measuring welfare. In Chapter 2, Cost-shifting versus “Full” Accountability: Dealing with Cross-time and Cross-boundary Issues in the ISEW and GPI for Belgium, the theoretical insights from Chapter 1 are translated in a “2.0 methodology” as two distinct types of welfare indicators with different time and geographical boundaries are calculated for Belgium. In Chapter 3, Is Europe Faring Well with Growth? Evidence from a Welfare Comparison in the EU-15 from 1995 to 2018, the newly developed and improved methodology is applied to the EU-15. This chapter shows that the EU-15, seen from a GDP perspective, has recovered from the financial crisis, but not from a welfare view. Chapter 4, Are the ISEW and GPI able to reveal social and biophysical limits to growth? An in-depth analysis of the threshold hypothesis for the EU-15, investigates whether the welfare stagnation in the EU-15 can be explained by decreasing social benefits of extra consumption and increasing ecological costs.}},
  author       = {{Van der Slycken, Jonas}},
  keywords     = {{ecological economics,beyond GDP,alternative measures of economic welfare,post-growth,degrowth,Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW),Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{xviii, 179}},
  publisher    = {{Universiteit Gent. Faculteit Economie en Bedrijfskunde}},
  school       = {{Ghent University}},
  title        = {{Beyond GDP : alternative measures of economic welfare for the EU-15}},
  year         = {{2021}},
}