The growth debate

It seems that people in the western world are striving for a never-ending improvement in living conditions. It has been much debated whether this is realistic. Pessimists argue that physical and biological limits will hamper any further increase of material consumption, while reducing opportunities for amenities generated by nature. Optimists are confident that technical progress will allow us to overcome such limits, and some of them try to argue that growth is essential for environmental preservation. One suggestion in support of this is that growth changes human preferences in favour of environmental quality. In general, optimists seem to be more concerned with economic stability and material consumption than with environmental amenities, nature's beauty and integrity of living organisms. In fact, one can easily get the impression that current information on environmental pollution and destruction, resource use, biodiversity loss (estimated to be occurring now at a rate 1000 times the natural rate), land cover changes, etc., are not taken very seriously by optimists.

Some more neutral positions in the "growth debate" state that growth is an inevitable process, being the result of so many decisions, made by individual consumers and producers, that can impossibly be controlled. In a similar vein it has been argued that any effort to stop growth will result in economic recessions, with as an inevitable consequence social and environmental problems. Russia can at present be regarded a good example.

GDP growth

Although most of us take economic growth for granted, it is a relatively recent phenomenon that has mainly occurred in the so-called Western world. During most of its history mankind has not experienced "growth". Many ancient and modern human tribal communities have for most of the time been satisfied with a stable level of population, consumption and interactions with their direct natural environment. Moreover, if one takes continuous growth to its extreme, say a steady pace of increase of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) a few thousand more years into the future, then one ends up with unrealistic GDP levels. For instance, when extrapolating a conservative estimate of the average growth rate over the last decades for the Western world, which amounts to about 2%, one finds over 1000 years a (1.02)¹⁰⁰⁰ -1 or 400,000,000 times higher GDP than at present. This immediately shows the danger of interpreting GDP growth in terms of welfare growth. Nobody would dare to argue that our potential welfare could even approach a level that is 400,000,000 times the present one. The GDP is thus meaningless as a general indicator of changes in economic, let alone human, welfare. Nevertheless, it is definitely useful as an indicator of economic stability, due to the fact that so many institutions and individuals regard it as important: banks, stock markets and private companies attach much value to increases in GDP.

Many people regard progress as synonymous with economic growth. Therefore, they implicitly or explicitly use GDP or GNP (Gross National Product) as an indicator of welfare and progress. It should be noted that the GDP was never actually developed for the purpose of welfare measurement. It is an outcome of income accounting, which is limited to goods and services that are traded via markets. This immediately touches upon its main weakness: it does not reflect the value of nonmarket goods and services. Some examples are as follows: GDP would be higher if a person dies in a hospital than if s/he dies at home; household work is not included in the national accounts; if a natural area is polluted and needs to be cleaned-up, this increases the GDP (e.g., the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Alaska is a very famous example; a Spanish example is the heavy metal pollution of Doñana.). So the GDP just adds up goods and services bought in the market, without making a distinction between market transactions that contribute positively and negatively to human welfare.

The nonmarket goods and services make up an important part of our welfare, notably in developing countries where family support and the informal economy are very crucial for mere survival of people. Not surprisingly, extremely low per capita incomes for some countries as reported in World Bank reports provide very incomplete information and should certainly not be used as a basis of comparing welfare between countries, certainly not between developed and low developing countries. For example, most Spanish unemployed young people are supported by their families. In spite of the fact that the GDP as an indicator of progress can be easily, and has been often, criticised, already since the 1960s, this has not prevented its use in this sense..

Nevertheless, it is understandable that the GDP is used as an important indicator of progress in low developed countries. Indeed, during some phases of development a close relationship can exist between income growth and welfare growth. But this is not necessarily the case if income growth goes along with the destruction of natural resources. Japan and the Netherlands are old examples where development has gone along with destruction of the natural environment; Brazil and Indonesia are more recent examples of this phenomenon.

The GDP indicator, being unable of capturing nonmarket goods and services, cannot reflect changes in welfare due to "substitution of nature by economy". For example, GDP grows when a forest is cut. Using the GDP as a progress indicator implicitly assumes that basic human conditions, such as space, direct access to resources (nature, freshwater) and serenity, can be substituted by economic goods such as large apartments, roads and personal cars, water purification, sewage systems, and expensive holidays. Once upon a time no price had to be paid for the first set of goods and services, i.e. they were provided for free by nature. The current situation is that these goods and services are either no longer available, of insufficient quality (polluted, congested), or privatised and having a market price. Using the GDP as the single progress indicator implies that substitution of "nature" by ""economy" is neglected, and that any shift from naturally and freely supplied goods and services to market goods and services is evaluated as "progress", irrespective of natural and environmental losses.

It is possible to go one step further, namely assume that there is a very strict limit to what can be substituted in consumption: people have many basic needs, such as food, shelter, company, respect and freedom. These cannot be traded-off against luxurious material consumption. This relates to the economic and psychological concept of lexicographic preferences, which denotes that individuals first will satisfy a "lower" need (satisfying hunger) before becoming interested in higher needs (recreation), and that they will have limited desires and needs, i.e. saturation occurs at certain levels of consumption. According to this view, growth of material consumption, notably in urban and polluted environments, is regarded as no more than imperfect compensation for loss of basic need satisfaction such as social relations, serenity, space and direct access to nature.

All in all, an increase in GDP is in itself not a cause for concern or joy. However, if it goes along with an increase at the same pace of energy and material use, of environmental pollution, and of ecosystem and biodiversity loss, there is much reason to worry. The latter seems to be the reality, unfortunately.

Indicators of progress

What is then a good indicator of progress? A "green GDP" has been proposed. It is an adaptation of the regular GDP. In essence, all changes in capital need to be accounted for. This means that not only depreciation of economic capital like buildings and machines needs to be included but also depreciation of natural resources like forests, soils and even biodiversity. A closely related concept is "sustainable GDP", which denotes a level of GDP that can be sustained, i.e. that allows for reproduction of its economic and environmental base. The concepts or indicators of green and sustainable GDP are rooted in welfare economics. Environmental economics, which overlaps with welfare economics, has suggested that environmental externalities be "internalised". Externalities are direct, unintended and uncompensated physical impacts by individuals on the welfare or production of others. Important externalities are noise, air and water pollution, soil erosion, resource exhaustion, desiccation, fragmentation, biodiversity loss, radioactivity, and various health affecting toxins. Recalculation of a GDP with externalities "internalised" is not a simple matter, as it implies a completely different set of prices in the economy. These point at the incorrectness of the present prices, which do not adequately reflect the various externalities (by definition).

There have been relatively few empirical exercises to calculate a green GDP. This is partly related to the last point. If one believes in the assumptions of the standard economic theory, a particular economic model of the whole economy (a so-called "general equilibrium model") is needed to calculate the correct prices and from these the green GDP. Such a model allows to trace all the derived or indirect effects of implementing correct prices reflecting external costs - via changes in incomes, prices, and interactions between sectors and different markets. The success of this approach depends on how well one solves immense data collection and statistical estimation problems. Furthermore, in general the calculation of real progress indicators is hampered by the fact that many basic needs cannot be translated in "individuals' willingness-to-pay" or "accounting prices".

In spite of these problems there have been a number of efforts to generate alternative progress indicators. Although starting from a theoretically ideal approach, these have ultimately adopted a somewhat pragmatic approach. The most well-known recent alternative progress indicators building upon the GDP are: the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), and Genuine Prowess Indicator (GPI). Each of these are subsequently discussed.

Examples of alternative welfare/progress indicators based on GDP corrections.

The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) is a monetary indicator of sustainable welfare that has been developed by Herman Daly and John Cobb for the USA in 1989. Since then it has been calculated for several European countries (Austria, Denmark, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands) and various other countries (e.g., Chili). The starting point is the GDP, which is adapted by considering non-market goods and services (housework), defensive costs of social and environmental protection and repair (health expenditure, costs of road accidents, costs of urbanisation), the reduction of future welfare caused by present production and consumption (loss of natural areas, loss of soil, depletion of non-renewable resources, air and water pollution, greenhouse effect), the costs of effort to obtain the present welfare level (commuting, costs of advertising, duration and intensity of work), and the distribution of income and labour (inequality among workers, between employed and unemployed, between males and females).

A similar procedure is followed by, and not surprisingly similar results are obtained for, the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). This is also a one-dimensional indicator in monetary terms, based on adjusting the GDP by considering over twenty features of human life that are ignored by the GDP. These can be categorised as:

1. Crime and family breakdown (legal fees, medical expenses, damage to property, crime and divorce);

2. Household and volunteer work (childcare, home repairs);

3. Income distribution (GPI rises when the poor receive a larger percentage of national income);

4. Resource depletion (depletion or degradation of wetlands, farmland, and nonrenewable minerals);

5. Pollution (costs of air and water pollution as measured by actual damage to human health and the environment);

6. Long term environmental damage (climate change, the management of nuclear wastes, and the depletion of stratospheric ozone);

7. Changes in leisure time;

8. Defensive expenditures (medical and repair bills from automobile accidents, commuting costs, and household expenditures on pollution control devices);

9. Lifespan of consumer durables and public infrastructure (the GPI treats the money spent on capital items as a costs and the value of the service they provide year after year as a benefit, applies both to private capital items and to public infrastructure);

10. Dependence on foreign assets (net additions to the capital stock are contributions to well-being, and money borrowed from abroad to finance consumption are reductions).

Both the ISEW and the GPI can be considered as measures of the benefits of economic activity. It has been argued in the 1960s and 1970s already, notably by Mishan and Daly, that the GDP should be regarded as the costs of economic activity. A comparison of the total costs and benefits of economic activity, and economic development, is thus possible once real progress indicators have been calculated. The GDP would then act as the costs and the real progress indicators as the benefits. The various country applications of the ISEW procedure (although elaborated in slightly different ways, due to different data bases and refinements of the original Daly/Cobb study) show that a growing gap exists between GDP patterns and ISEW patterns. For many countries up to the 1970s GDP only slightly overestimates the growth of economic welfare. Since the mid eighties GDP continues to rise, whereas ISEW remains approximately at the same level. An important reason for this gap, in addition to global environmental problems (greenhouse effect, biodiversity loss) and increased inequity, may have been a substitution of household production outside the market by services provided by the market (e.g., child care). The GPI for the USA increased during the 1950s and 1960s, but has declined by about 45% since 1970. Moreover, the rate of decline in per capita GPI has increased from an average of 1% in the 1970s to 6% in the l990s.The GPI suggests that the costs of "economic growth" now outweigh the benefits, leading to "growth that is uneconomic" (paraphrasing Herman Daly).

Mobility, transport and infrastructure

An important category of externalities is related to transport, most importantly to the use of cars and planes. These externalities include ones related to road accidents, time losses due to road congestion, noise, emissions of various substances (suspended particles, NO_x, SO₂ and CO₂), and habitat destruction through fragmentation by infrastructure. Time losses dominate in terms of economic values.

Economic growth has generated much regional specialisation with as a consequence a growth of transport, which in many countries is occurring now at an even faster rate than of the economy in general. All the experts agree that the prices of transport are incorrect, not reflecting the various externalities. Especially private car use, freight transport by trucks and air traffic are implicitly subsidised relative to alternative modes of transport such as the train, the ship (especially via rivers and canals), the bicycle and walking. As a result of such implicit subsidies, car use and road use are too much and incorrectly stimulated, notably during peak hours. Moreover, as a result there is insufficient and non-optimal development of opportunities for substitution of transport, such as "teleworking", smaller commuting distances (changes in houses or jobs), and alternative types of recreation (not depending on car use and/or closer to house). Artificially low prices of transport in general, i.e. compared with other goods and services in the economy, have stimulated too much transport, and especially too big distances between dwellings and working places. For the future, too low prices also result in an overestimation of the need for road capacities.

A similar story can be told for air traffic and airports. At present there is an international agreement on how to charge air traffic, which has resulted in no taxes on kerosene, no -VAT (value added tax) on plane tickets, and tax-free shops. This evidently has lead to incorrect competition with other modes of transport, notably trains and ships, for both freight and passenger transport. Furthermore, the growth of demand for air traffic will be higher than necessary, and has lead to much pressure of airports to extend their capacity, in spite of significant problems, like in the Netherlands, due to limited space, noise and increased risks to human health (pollutive emissions are hardly mentioned in the political debate!). This is not only unfair to the people living in the neighbourhood that suffer from all the negative elects of airports; it is incorrect and unwise from economic and equity perspectives; in particular, it gives rise to a transfer of income from poorer to richer people, given that the latter make more use of transport by air.

In general it is difficult to provide a simple and correct theoretical framework of optimal infrastructure and infrastructure extension. Infrastructure extension should not be analysed in a context of fixed demand. Infrastructure extensions changes the demand conditions. For instance, due to new road infrastructure, congestion will be temporarily reduced, which will attract new road users who find that the time gains are attractive. As a result mobility increases and congestion along with it. It should also be realised that congestion in a situation of incorrect prices, as discussed above, is not a good base for deciding about infrastructure extension. Only if prices are correct can one make honest and economically correct decisions in this respect. And even then a trade-off is necessary between the extra social benefits of investing in additional road capacity and investing the same amount of money in other public services. The benefits of many road extensions are often doubtful, and certainly not supported by any empirical evidence. It is often forgotten that alternative investments, in completely different (public) services like education, health care, police, internet, etc., may render higher or competitive social benefits (which economists refer to as opportunity costs; these should be included in a social cost-benefit analysis of large investment projects).

Transport policy

An important element in guiding or even limiting the growth of transport is to adapt the prices of transport. Road transport prices should be corrected to make optimal use of existing road capacity. At present, road capacities are adjusted to peak hour road use. But of course the users during the peak hours should be charged higher, since their use of the roads is responsible for, or requires, the capacity. This simple and economically straightforward idea has been often applied to charges in public transport during peak hours, notably in train services, but it has hardly been implemented in transport policies directed at regulating road use? The best system for this is road pricing, which means that road users are charged according to the marginal social cost, i.e. taking into account all externalities and especially time losses caused on others. Such a system would need to collect information on the intensity of road use, translate this into a charge (price), which should then be communicated to potential road users. Clearly, the charge would not be fixed, but depend on a combination of factors: the time of day, the road capacity, the type of car (larger cars and trucks cause much more congestion externalities per vehicle than small cars). Second-best instruments, i.e. not optimal but the closest in impact to the optimal road-pricing system, should be used as long as this system cannot be implemented yet, for instance, due to technical or social-political barriers. Second-best instruments include toll-rings (i.e. uniform pricing in a certain zone, via charging at entries to the zone, similar to toll roads) for peak hours in densely populated and highly congested areas, and gasoline tax differences between regions. In general, all these measures are consistent with the idea that the private costs of car use should become more variable so that peoples’ car use and driving behaviour is influenced, via a shift from fixed road taxes to variable taxes (gasoline, road prices). It is even possible to apply the instrument of tradable permits: every individual is give a fixed amount of permits reflecting driving time, which can be sold or to which one can add permits to by buying from other owners of permits. If information exchange is close to perfect a "permit market" can arrange a price that reflects individuals' willingness to pay for permits. This means that the most profitable car trips are made; moreover, an income transfer will occur from road users to non road users (often low incomes); pf course, the main advantage of a permit system is that it guarantees the total number of car hours (and thus car kilometres) to be limited from above. Without arguing that there are no problems with each of the foregoing suggestions, they together offer many opportunities for improving the present situation of road use from an economic, distribution and environmental perspective.

Of course, additional measures to price instruments may be considered as well. For instance, small cars should be stimulated, as they cause less congestion, use less energy, use less parking space, etc. Technical restrictions on maximum speed of cars can implemented: it is really amazing and even criminal that almost all cars presently on roads drive much faster than the maximum speed on any road. In the future we will have the opportunity to implement variable speed control systems. These will be able to control maximum speeds for particular types of roads, using modern information and communication technology systems, which are likely to be integrated with the mentioned road pricing systems. Finally, technical progress of cars has up till now been mostly aimed at creating luxurious, fast and large cars, which are safe for insiders, but unsafe for outsiders (i.e. they generate externalities, via accidents). By making car producers responsible for the negative impacts of cars, car technology may quickly develop in more desirable directions: slow, light, and energy-efficient cars. Technical restrictions on maximum speed and acceleration can already now be implemented. Limiting acceleration speed of cars has attracted little attention, but can increase safety and feeling of safety of pedestrians and bicyclists inside cities, while reducing risks of accidents. It should be realized that the present speed and acceleration capacities of cars invite for aggressive driving. Moreover, we should have understood by now that technical limitations will be much more effective (and cheaper) in changing driving styles than information campaigns.

Relative welfare and changing preferences

While the GDP or per capita GDP approach to progress is concerned with average incomes, it is clearly important to take notice of two other elements. First of all, from a social perspective the distribution of income is important. An unequal distribution of income often goes along with unequal opportunities for personal welfare and development, such as access to education, employment, and resources. A progress indicator needs to account of this. In addition, lower income families benefit more from a given increase in income than higher income families, which should also be reflected by any real progress indicator.

A more basic issue is that individual welfare can never be assessed independently from the welfare of other individuals in the relevant social environment. The latter may be the tribe, village, region, country, and, given the quick dissemination of Western material lifestyles via mass media (part of the so-called "globalisation" process), even the whole world. For example, poverty is a relative concept: in a country like the Netherlands people can be considered poor nowadays if they cannot go on holidays at least once, and possibly twice, a year; in the USA one is poor if one cannot buy a second car. Poverty in this case means that people are likely to be unhappy as a result of being unable to consume goods that most other individuals in their relevant social environment possess.

Preferences are nowadays very much shaped by commercial television, radio and magazines, as well as by the social interaction with individuals that all buy and consume new goods at a high rate. We see our children being affected by their peers in this respect, and we adults are sensitive to it as well. But who can say that creating new preferences, i.e. interests for goods and services previously non-existent, will increase individuals' happiness? We should try to stop the "affluenza virus", although at the moment this seems virtually impossible.

Not a single indicator?

In addition to the various specific shortcomings of the GDP as a welfare or progress indicator one can mention a very basic disadvantage that is related to its aggregate character. Aggregation of information in general leads to a loss of information. Searching for a single progress indicator amenable for use in various situations can be compared to King Arthur's quest for the Holy Grail. In our opinion it is impossible to come up with a generally acceptable one-dimensional indicator of progress, i.e. one that can be used in all circumstances, countries, development phases, etc. The only alternative then is to employ a multidimensional set of welfare indicators. In fact, in evaluation and planning of macroeconomic policy other indicators than the GDP are used, namely the unemployment rate, the government budget deficit, the inflation rate, and the exchange rate.

However, in case of multiple indicators one still has to make an aggregation step, since otherwise it is impossible to reach a clear interpretation, or to compare different situations. This is the main reason that there is so much interest in developing one-dimensional indicators. The ISEW and GPI are examples that have already been discussed. In the context of broad welfare and progress evaluation the Human Development Index is another example. It is reported by the United Nations. It is based on aggregating a number of other indicators. The difference with the green GDP, ISEW and GPI calculations is that it is not aimed at generating a monetary indicator based on adapting the GDP. Instead it aggregates a number of indicators including the GDP. The subindicators are: life expectancy, adult literacy, combined first-, second, and third-level gross enrolment ratio, and real and adjusted real GDP per capita (see http://www.undp. org/hdro/98.htm) .

It is easy to develop other indicators of welfare: time needed for commuting, average available leisure time, proportion of income spent on housing, public health services available, direct access to nature, etc. The winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics, Amartya Sen, has written extensively about quality of life indicators. In addition to such objective indicators, subjective information can be used that is obtained from international comparisons of happiness via surveys.

Concluding remarks

It is important to distinguish between a number of growth concepts and related indicators.

1. Growth in physical terms, measured by energy use, materials flows through the economy, freight transport, land use, biomass use, etc. Single aggregate indicators such as MIPS (material intensity per service) or the "Ecological Footprint" have been proposed but these suffer from all the deficiencies of aggregate indicators. A better indicator is perhaps a Net Primary Product use indicator.

2. Growth in the traditional economic meaning. This is measured by GNP (or GDP) (in per capita terms).

3. Growth in economic welfare, measured by a corrected GDP, taking account of nonmarket goods and services and external costs. This can be measured by a "green income" concept.

Growth in human welfare, measured by a multidimensional set of indicators, complemented by subjective indicators.

From a human development and poverty perspective we are most interested in the fourth concept. The third one will only be incompletely reflecting what the fourth approach does. It should also be noted that growth according to definition 1 and 4 is clearly limited, whereas growth according to approach 2 can continue indefinitely. This repeats in other words what has been stated earlier: the GDP cannot serve as a general indicator of human welfare and progress. Alternative indicators are needed that address time use (commuting, leisure), income spending (housing, food), community relationships, etc. Two alternative monetary indicators of well-being or progress, the ISEW and GPI, show that much of what is by many (economists and others) considered as economic (GDP) growth is really something else: increasing costs of repair and compensating environmental pollution and damage; borrowing resources from the future; a shift from free goods and services provided by nature to market goods and services with a price; and substitution of nonmarket community and household functions to market services.

We also discussed the problems associated with transport and transport infrastructure, and how to deal with these. The impact of more infrastructure and more transport on welfare and progress is not always clear. The main problem at present is that in most countries correct environment-transport policies are entirely lacking. As a result, any forecasting of transport demand, be it passenger or freight related, will tend to lead to overestimates. In order to guide the development of transport infrastructure and of mobility (or transport demand) we need to implement correct price policies as well as technical standards on cars. The prices of the various means of transport (notably road and air) should reflect all externalities from accidents, congestion (time losses), noise and pollution. Only then will it be possible to assess the real demand for transport, now and in the future. If we do not follow this path we will end up with too much transport and too much infrastructure, from a purely economic perspective, with all the negative environmental and social consequences. An economically sound perspective takes into account social costs of transport, and provides a real integration of environmental and economic "interests". The way to confront planners and narrow economic perspectives is to adopt a real, i.e. broad, economic perspective, that builds upon all our knowledge about environmental and human related impacts of economic activity in general and transport in particular.

Further reading and information

Beckerman, W. (1976). In Defense of Economic Growth. Jonathan Cape, London.

Beckerman, W. (1995). Small Is Stupid: Blowing the Whistle on the Green. Duckworth, London

Along with Simon (see later) Beckerman is one of the most powerful proponents of economic growth, in a very clear and often convincing style.

Button, K.J., and E.T. Verhoef (1998). Road Pricing. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK.

This is the best book on road pricing. It provides a collection by experts on transport economics, and in particular on road pricing as an instrument to arrive at correct prices for road transport. Theoretical and practical issues are discussed.

Daly, H.E. (1977/1992). Steady-State Economics. Island Press, Washington D.C.

This is one of the clearest writers in favour of steady state rather than a growing economy.

Daly, H.E., and J. Cobb (1989). For the Common Good. Beacon Press, Boston.

This provides a critique on traditional economics from a broad social and environmental science perspective. It also proposes an alternative welfare indicator: the Index of Social-Economic Welfare (ISEW) which is calculated for the USA and shows a decrease of welfare where GDP increases.

Daly, H.E., and K.N. Townsend (eds., 1993). Valuing the Earth: Economics, Ecology, Ethics . The MIT Press, Boston.

This is a collection (third revised edition) with classic articles and surveys by the most important authors in the area of "ecological economics" with a focus on economic growth.

Lecomber, R (1975). Economic Growth versus the Environment. MacMillan, London.

This small book provides a very accessible and complete overview of the growth debate with a focus on environmental issues during the sixties and seventies.

Martinez-Alier, Joan (1995). "The environment as a luxury good or to poor to be green?" Ecological Economics, 13:1-10.

This article offers a critical perspective on the relationship between economic growth, environmental policy and quality, and development and poverty.

Meadows, D.H., D.L. Meadows, J. Randers and W.W. Behrens III (1972). The Limits to Growth. Universe Books, New York.

Meadows, D.H., D L. Meadows, and J. Randers (1993). Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future. Chelsea Green Pub. Co.

Probably the most famous critique of economic growth as well as most critised work. The 1993 publications presents a revised model and set of scenario experiments with basically the same conclusion: we are on a disaster track and need to implement drastic policies to leave it.

Mishan, E.J. (1967). The Cost of' Economic Growth. Staples Press, London.

This is a famous early critique of the goal of economic growth and on the use of the GDP as an indicator of welfare and progress.

Mishan E.J. (1977). the Economic Growth Debate: An Assessment. George Allen and Unwin, London. This book provides a broad assessment of the various positions in the growth debate.

Myers, N. and J.L. Simon, 1994. Scarcity or Abundance? A Debate on the Environment. W.W. Norton & Co., New York.

A unique book providing a debate between an opponent of economic growth (Simon) and an expert in biology (Myers) and one of the most forceful proponents of economic growth.

Rietveld, P. and F.R. Bruinsma, l998. Is Transport Infrastructure Effective: Transport Infrastructure and Accessibility Impacts on the Space Economy. Springer, Berlin.

This book discusses the impact of transport infrastructure from theoretical and empirical perspectives. It includes various case studies.

Sen, A. (1997). Choice, Welfare and Measurement. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

This book discusses some important insights about welfare and progress measurement by the 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Simon, J.L., and H. Kahn (19X4). The Resourceful Earth. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

A clear and empirically supported statement of the optimistic position in the growth debate. Simon is with Beckerman one of the most clear and forceful writers in favour of economic growth.

Relevant Websites

http://www.undp.org/hdro/98.htm – The "Human Development Report" and "Human Development Index", United Nations Development Programme.

http://www.worldbank.org/wdr -- The World Bank’s "World Development Report".

http://www.sustainableliving.org -- Information on concepts and indicators of sustainable development and progress.

http://www.dieoff.org/page11.htm -- Discusses shortcomings of the GDP as a progress indicator as well as alternative progress indicators.

http://www.trytel.com/~cfalt/GPI/ -- Literature survey on alternative well-being indicators.

http://www.worldbank.org/lsms/-- Data sets and methodological lessons from the surveys that has developed the World Bank to measure and understand poverty.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jun/consume.htm -- Is an article of M. Sagoff called "Do we consume too much?" that appeared in the American magazine " The Atlantic Monthly", June 1997.