IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/acctbr/v45y2015i4p447-464.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Disregarded capitals: what national accounting ignores

Author

Listed:
  • Partha Dasgupta

Abstract

In this paper, I review - and to an extent further develop - a methodology of national accounting that responds to the needs of governments when they engage in sustainability and policy analyses. Those needs would be served only if national accounts were directed at estimating the economy's wealth (which is the social worth of an economy's entire stock of capital assets), not growth in gross domestic product or improvements in the many ad hoc indicators of human development that have been proposed in recent years. Concurrently, I show that by poverty, we should mean a low level of wealth, not income, and that the distribution of human well-being ought to be judged in terms of the distribution of wealth, not income or education, or any of the several indicators that are currently in use. I show that the concept of wealth invites us to extend the notion of assets and the idea of investment well beyond conventional usage. This perspective has radical implications for the way national accounts are prepared and interpreted. I then sketch a recent publication that has put the theory to work by studying the composition of wealth accumulation in contemporary India. Private firms routinely produce balance sheets. Nations should do the same.

Suggested Citation

  • Partha Dasgupta, 2015. "Disregarded capitals: what national accounting ignores," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(4), pages 447-464, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:acctbr:v:45:y:2015:i:4:p:447-464
    DOI: 10.1080/00014788.2015.1033851
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00014788.2015.1033851
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00014788.2015.1033851?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. World Bank, 2011. "The Changing Wealth of Nations : Measuring Sustainable Development in the New Millennium," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2252.
    2. Dasgupta, Partha, 2004. "Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199267194.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cristian Cenar & Iuliana Cenar, 2021. "Microaccounting and Macroaccounting: Characteristics and Interferences," Ovidius University Annals, Economic Sciences Series, Ovidius University of Constantza, Faculty of Economic Sciences, vol. 0(1), pages 710-718, August.
    2. Corinne Ollier Bessieux & Emmanuelle Negre & Marie-Anne Verdier, 2022. "Moving from Accounting for People to Accounting with People: A Critical Analysis of the Literature and Avenues for Research," Post-Print hal-03889478, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Partha Dasgupta, 2013. "The Nature of Economic Development and the Economic Development of Nature," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1349, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    2. Hans-Jürgen Engelbrecht, 2015. "A General Model of the Innovation - Subjective Well-Being Nexus," Economic Complexity and Evolution, in: Andreas Pyka & John Foster (ed.), The Evolution of Economic and Innovation Systems, edition 127, pages 69-90, Springer.
    3. Cairns, Robert D. & Martinet, Vincent, 2021. "Growth and long-run sustainability," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(4), pages 381-402, August.
    4. Beck, Thorsten & Poelhekke, Steven, 2023. "Follow the money: Does the financial sector intermediate natural resource windfalls?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    5. Kevin J. Fox & Nicola Brandt & Paul Schreyer & Vera Zipperer, 2017. "Productivity Measurement with Natural Capital," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63, pages 7-21, February.
    6. John Reilly, 2015. "Energy and Development in Emerging Countries," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 23(HS), pages 19-38.
    7. Greasley, David & McLaughlin, Eoin & Hanley, Nick & Oxley, Les, 2017. "Australia: a land of missed opportunities?," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(6), pages 674-698, December.
    8. J. Doyne Farmer & John Geanakoplos & Matteo G. Richiardi & Miquel Montero & Josep Perelló & Jaume Masoliver, 2024. "Discounting the Distant Future: What Do Historical Bond Prices Imply about the Long-Term Discount Rate?," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-25, February.
    9. H. Spencer Banzhaf & James Boyd, 2012. "The Architecture and Measurement of an Ecosystem Services Index," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-32, March.
    10. Dirk H M Akkermans, 2017. "Net profit flow per country from 1980 to 2009: The long-term effects of foreign direct investment," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(6), pages 1-28, June.
    11. Halkos, George & Managi, Shunsuke, 2023. "New developments in the disciplines of environmental and resource economics," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 513-522.
    12. Glenn-Marie Lange, 2014. "Environmental accounting," Chapters, in: Giles Atkinson & Simon Dietz & Eric Neumayer & Matthew Agarwala (ed.), Handbook of Sustainable Development, chapter 21, pages 319-335, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Edward B. Barbier, 2017. "Natural Capital and Wealth in the 21st Century," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 43(3), pages 391-405, June.
    14. Simplice Asongu & Uduak S. Akpan & Salisu R. Isihak, 2018. "Determinants of foreign direct investment in fast-growing economies: evidence from the BRICS and MINT countries," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 4(1), pages 1-17, December.
    15. Pezzey, John C.V. & Burke, Paul J., 2014. "Towards a more inclusive and precautionary indicator of global sustainability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 141-154.
    16. A. B. Dolgushin & S. E. Mazina & I. A. Larionova, 2022. "Model of acceptable and sustainable development of social-ecology-economic systems based on the circularity principle in biosphere cycles," Russian Journal of Industrial Economics, MISIS, vol. 15(2).
    17. Koji Tokimatsu & Louis Dupuy & Nick Hanley, 2019. "Using Genuine Savings for Climate Policy Evaluation with an Integrated Assessment Model," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(1), pages 281-307, January.
    18. Martin Neve & Bertrand Hamaide, 2017. "Environmental Kuznets Curve with Adjusted Net Savings as a Trade-Off Between Environment and Development," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 39-58, March.
    19. Matthias Blum & Eoin McLaughlin & Nick Hanley, 2019. "Accounting for Sustainable Development over the Long‐Run: Lessons from Germany," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 20(4), pages 410-446, November.
    20. Crivelli, Ernesto & Gupta, Sanjeev, 2014. "Resource blessing, revenue curse? Domestic revenue effort in resource-rich countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 88-101.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:acctbr:v:45:y:2015:i:4:p:447-464. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RABR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.