Measuring sustainable well-being is an important task in determining whether people's lives are improving or becoming worse over time. A new index, the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), has been developed in order to measure sustainable well-being. The GPI is comprised of a large number of...

Australia has recorded consistently strong levels of economic growth in recent times. Under conventional considerations, the well-being experienced by Australians would also be considered to have increased in equal terms over this period. This is because aggregate standard national accounts have...

This paper argues that GDP growth in both developed and developing countries has associated costs that can outweigh the benefits and thus reduce sustainable well-being. This conclusion is based upon the findings of empirical applications of the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) to a range of...

Frequent references are made to the 'Asian economic miracle' as a means of describing the wave of GDP growth experienced across the Asia-Pacific region over the past twenty years. Implicit in this description is the assumption that the Asia-Pacific region has progressed at the same rate that GDP...

pt. 1. An introduction to ecological economics, sustainable development and the steady-state economy -- pt. 2. Sustainable development and natural capital -- pt. 3. Sustainable development indicators -- pt. 4. Sustainable development : theoretical and policy issues -- pt. 5. Sustainable...

For some time now, ecological economists have been putting forward a ‘threshold hypothesis’ – the notion that when macroeconomic systems expand beyond a certain size, the additional cost of growth exceeds the flow of additional benefits. In order to support their belief, ecological...

Andrew Brennan (Ecological Economics, 2013--this issue) has argued that the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) and Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) are theoretically flawed because, as indicators designed to capture the net psychic income generated by economic activity, they fail to...

Central government policy is based on a misguided understanding of the macroeconomics of a modern, fiat-currency economy. As the owner/issuer of a nation's currency, a central government has unlimited spending power. Moreover, taxation exists as nothing more than a means by which a central...