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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 theory backed by 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 tell us that the change in real wealth (net saving) is an essential indicator of economic
progress. Net national saving, measured comprehensively and adjusted to reflect the investment in and the depreciation of the full range of assets measured in national wealth, is an indicator of the change in future wellbeing. Governments can use this measure to answer a fundamental question: How
much does the stream of future wellbeing of the population rise or fall as a result of policy actions today? The book is organized into four parts. Part one provides the political context and defines the key concepts. Part two examines the history of wealth creation and destruction. Part three provides a more detailed analysis of the individual components of wealth, and finally, part four examines the
lessons for managing wealth for sustainable national prosperity.
List of contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Part One: Concepts
- 1: Diane Coyle: The Political Economy of National Statistics
- 2: Martin L. Weitzman: A Tight Connection Among Wealth, Income, Sustainability and Accounting in an Ultra-Simplified Setting
- 3: Claudia Senik: Wealth and Happiness
- Part Two: History of Wealth Creation and Destruction
- 4: Matthias Blum, Cristián Ducoing, Eoin McLaughlin: A Sustainable Century: Genuine Savings in Developing and Developed Countries, 1900-2000
- 5: Edward N. Wolff: Household Wealth Trends in the US, 1983 to 2010
- 6: Eoin McLaughlin, Nick Hanley, David Greasley, Jan Kunnas, Les Oxley, and Paul Warde: Historical Wealth Accounts for Britain: Progress and Puzzles in Measuring the Sustainability of Economic Growth
- 7: Frank Cowell, Brian Nolan, Javier Olivera, and Philippe Van Kerm: Wealth, Top Incomes, and Inequality
- 8: Mariana Mazzucato: Wealth Creation and the Entrepreneurial State
- Part Three: Components of Wealth
- 9: Carl Obst and Michael Vardon: Recording Environmental Assets in the National Accounts
- 10: Kirk Hamilton and Gang Liu: Human Capital, Tangible Wealth, and the Intangible Capital Residual
- 11: Kirk Hamilton, John F. Helliwell, and Michael Woolcock: Social Capital, Trust, and Well-being in the Evaluation of Wealth
- 12: Michael Klein: Infrastructure: Political Economy of Wealth Creation
- 13: Dimitri Zenghelis: Nodes of Capital: Cities, Wealth, and the Era of Urbanization
- Part Four: Wealth and Sustainability
- 14: Kirk Hamilton and John Hartwick: Wealth and Sustainability
- 15: Dieter Helm: Sustainable Economic Growth and the Role of Natural Capital
- 16: Colin Mayer: Finance, Wealth, Technological Innovation, and Regulation
- 17: Rolando Ossowski and Håvard Halland: The Economics of Sovereign Wealth Funds
- 18: Rick van der Ploeg: Sustainable Management of Natural Resource Wealth
- Part Five: Conclusion
- 19: Kirk Hamilton and Cameron Hepburn: Conclusion
About the author
Dr Kirk Hamilton is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Emeritus Lead Economist in the Development Research Group of The World Bank. He is co-author of The Changing Wealth of Nations (World Bank 2011) and World Development Report 2010 Development and Climate Change. He is principal author of Where is the Wealth of Nations? (World Bank 2006) and led research on the links between poverty and environment, 'greening' the national accounts, and the economics of climate change. He also served as Assistant Director of National Accounts for the government of Canada, where his responsibilities included developing an environmental national accounting program.
Professor Cameron Hepburn is the Director of the Economics of Sustainability Programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and Professor of Environmental Economics at the Smith School and a Fellow at New College, Oxford. He is also Professorial Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science and serves as Managing Editor of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. He has published several dozen peer-reviewed papers and is co-author with Dieter Helm of The Economics and Politics of Climate Change (OUP) and Nature in the Balance: the Economics of Biodiversity (OUP). He frequently advises companies, governments and international organizations on energy, resources and environmental strategy.
Summary
To understand economics, it is crucial to define wealth, and understand how it is created, destroyed, stored and managed. This edited volume assembles high-quality contributions defining key concepts and addressing economic and policy issues around national wealth.
