GOOD, ECONOMIC WELFARE, AND THE NATIONAL DIVIDEND—PIGOU’S WELFARE TRIAD

Unemployment and Economic Welfare

David Andolfatto is a professor of economics at the the University of Waterloo and the University of Western Ontario. Paul Gomme is an economic advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Both authors are members of the Centre for Research on Economic Fluctuations and Employment in Montreal, Canada. They thank LutzAlexander Busch, Gordon Myers, and Ed Nosal for helpful comments and critic...

The Welfare Economic Theory of Green National Accounts

This paper takes a critical look at the literature on green national accounts. The problem studied is to find a linear index of economic variables that responds to perturbations in the same direction as social well-being. The thesis of a large literature, that net national product (which is a flow) is that index in closed economies, is shown in some interpretations to be simply false and in oth...

Good Governance, Welfare, and Transformation

Market conforming institutions are a precondition for a thriving and stable economy. This is the upshot of the Washington consensus or, of somewhat earlier origin, the “Eucken hypothesis”. Another hypothesis of Eucken has it that market conforming institutions are the product of a strong state. However, more general and more important than the strong state is good governance. In this paper I re...

Subjective Economic Welfare

Economic shocks, wealth and welfare

The immediate effects of the Asian crisis on the well-being of Indonesians are examined using the Indonesia Family Life Survey, an on-going longitudinal household survey. There is tremendous diversity in the effect of the shock: for some households, it was devastating; for others it brought new opportunities. A wide array of mechanisms were adopted in response to the crisis. Households combined...