National wealth : what is missing, why it matters

Why are some nations wealthy and others poor? How did the wealthy nations become rich? What are the components of wealth? How should nations manage their wealth for the future? These are among the most important questions in economics. They are also impossible to answer without defining wealth, and understanding how it can be created, destroyed, stored, and managed. National Wealth: What is Missing, Why it Matters assembles a collection of high-quality contributions to define the key concepts and address the economic and policy issues around national wealth. It considers insights from economic history, addresses the impacts of the changes to national accounting, and teases out the policy implications for both rich and poor countries and the institutions within them. Using expert analysis and theoretically grounded empirical work, this book evaluates the progress that has been made in measuring national wealth, as well as the recent developments in theory and practice which show that the change in real wealth is an essential indicator of economic progress and future well-being. Measuring the change in real wealth answers the fundamental question: How much does the stream of future well-being of the population rise or fall as a result of policy actions today? Organized into four parts, National Wealth defines the key political and economic concepts of wealth. examines the history of wealth creation and destruction, and provides a detailed analysis of the individual components of wealth before finally examining the lessons for managing wealth for sustainable national prosperity.