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Measuring Economic Sustainability and Progress

Since the Great Depression, researchers and statisticians have recognized the need for more extensive methods for measuring economic growth and sustainability. The recent recession renewed commitments to closing long-standing gaps in economic measurement, including those related to sustainability and well-being.

The latest in the NBER’s influential Studies in Income and Wealth series, which has played a key role in the development of national account statistics in the United States and other nations, this volume explores collaborative solutions between academics, policy researchers, and official statisticians to some of today’s most important economic measurement challenges. Contributors to this volume extend past research on the integration and extension of national accounts to establish an even more comprehensive understanding of the distribution of economic growth and its impact on well-being, including health, human capital, and the environment. The research contributions assess, among other topics, specific conceptual and empirical proposals for extending national accounts.

Table of Contents

Contents
 
Prefatory Note
 
Introduction
Dale W. Jorgenson, J. Steven Landefeld, and Paul Schreyer
 
1.   Economic Measurement
Ben S. Bernanke
 
I. Expanded Measures of Economic Sustainability and Welfare: Retrospect and Prospect
 
2.   Expanded Measurement of Economic Activity: Progress and Prospects
Katharine G. Abraham
 
3.   Measuring Social Welfare in the US National Accounts
Dale W. Jorgenson and Daniel T. Slesnick
 
4.   Household Production, Leisure, and Living Standards
Paul Schreyer and W. Erwin Diewert
 
5.   Representing Consumption and Saving without a Representative Consumer
Christopher D. Carroll
 
II. Reconciling Administrative and Survey Data on the Distribution of Income and Wealth
 
6.   Integration of Micro- and Macrodata on Consumer Income and Expenditures
Clinton P. McCully
 
7.   Trends in the Distribution of Household Income, 1979?2010
Edward Harris and Frank Sammartino
 
8.   Accounting for the Distribution of Income in the US National Accounts
Dennis Fixler and David S. Johnson
 
9.   Analysis of Wealth Using Micro- and Macrodata: A Comparison of the Survey of Consumer Finances and Flow of Funds Accounts
Alice M. Henriques and Joanne W. Hsu
 
III. Integrated Economic Accounts
 
10. The Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts of the United States
Marco Cagetti, Elizabeth Ball Holmquist, Lisa Lynn, Susan Hume McIntosh, and David Wasshausen
 
11. A Prototype BEA/BLS Industry-Level Production Account for the United States
Susan Fleck, Steven Rosenthal, Matthew Russell, Erich H. Strassner, and Lisa Usher
 
12. Toward the Development of Sectoral Financial Positions and Flows in a From-Whom-to-Whom Framework
Manik Shrestha
 
IV. Measuring Sustainability: The Environment, Human Capital, Health, and Innovation
 
13. Toward the Measurement of Net Economic Welfare: Air Pollution Damage in the US National Accounts—2002, 2005, 2008
Nicholas Z. Muller
 
14. Human Capital Accounting in the United States: Context, Measurement, and Application
Michael S. Christian
 
15. Measuring the Stock of Human Capital for International and Intertemporal Comparisons
Gang Liu
 
16. Developing a Framework for Decomposing Medical-Care Expenditure Growth: Exploring Issues of Representativeness
Abe Dunn, Eli Liebman, and Adam Hale Shapiro
 
17. Experimental Measures of Output and Productivity in the Canadian Hospital Sector, 2002 to 2010
Wulong Gu and Stéphane Morin
 
18. Innovation Accounting
Carol A. Corrado and Charles R. Hulten
 
Panel Remarks
J. Steven Landefeld
Shirin Ahmed
John W. Ruser
Adelheid Burgi-Schmelz
 
Contributors
Author Index
Subject Index

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