The Regional Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare for Flanders, Belgium

Abstract

Abstract:In this paper, the regional Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) is compiled for Flanders for the period 1990-2009. The ISEW is a measure of economic welfare in that it measures the contribution of a country's or region's economy to the overall level of well-being of its citizens. It does so by comparing the benefits and the costs of economic activities rather than simply looking at the market value of all final goods and services produced in an economy (Gross Domestic Product-GDP). The ISEW for Flanders shows that the per capita level of sustainable economic welfare in the region decreased between 1990 and 2009. The drop in the ISEW/capita is caused by a deterioration of the net international investment position of Belgium (which is divided over the different regions in the country on a per capita basis) and by an increase in the income inequalities in Flanders. To a lesser extent, the increase of the environmental costs (climate change and the use of non-renewable energy resources) also contributed to the decrease in the ISEW per capita. In the last four years of the study period, the level of sustainable economic welfare in the Flemish region started to rise again, even in 2008 and 2009 during the economic recession.

From Life Cycle Costing to Economic Life Cycle Assessment—Introducing an Economic Impact Pathway

“…Furthermore, current GDP measures do not consider equity and distribution [15]. Complementary indicators have been provided with the Genuine Progress indicator (GPI) [82][83][84] or the enlarged GDP introduced by the European Commission [85], addressing the aspect of prosperity and thus complementing the growth-orientated view. The GPI and/or the enlarged GDP may therefore serve as first economic indicators at the endpoint level until tailored life cycle based indicators have been established.…”

“…Those resources must be carefully managed to avoid the "resource curse", which would hinder long-term development and thus prosperity (see Section 3.3.1) [60,68]. Long-term investments seem to determine the success and survival of an organization in the market and ensure corporate self-reliance [43,60,82]. Furthermore, it seems relevant in connection with agricultural products, as soil fertility determines a business's success in the long term [108].…”

Methodological approaches to accounting the depletion of natural resources, changes in the environmental and human capital in the gross regional product

“…However, a surprising amount of research is dedicated to ISEW/GPI calculation. Following the pioneer work [4], there appeared publications with results of ISEW and GPI calculation for Austria, Great Britain, Vietnam, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Thailand, France, Sweden, and Japan [7,8]. Along with studies at a state level, ISEW and GPI indices are widely used at the regional level (Table 1).…”

Regional Inequality of Sport Facilities in Turkey

“…Eşitsizlik endekslerinin bölgesel dağılımdaki dengesizliğin ölçümünde de yoğun olarak kullanıldığı da gözlemlenmektedir. Bu çalışma kapsamında kullanımı tercih edilen Atkinson endeksinin bölgesel dengesizliğin ölçümünde kullanımında da özellikle ekonomi disiplini başta olmak üzere göç, sağlık, eğitim bilimleri gibi çok sayıda disipline dair örneklerle karşılaşılmaktadır (Islam ve Habibullah, 1986;Castro, 2003;Dayığlu ve Başlevent, 2006;Wan, Lu ve Chen, 2007;Çiftçi, 2009;Çiftçi ve Seymen, 2011Çiftçi ve Seymen, ,2012Vilaverde ve Maza, 2012;Bleys, 2013).…”