Inclusion of Environmental Goods in National Income Accounting

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
National income statistics take into account the values of market goods and completely ignore the environmental goods. The purpose of this paper is to suggest the integration of environmental goods into the framework of Leontiefs input–output analysis. It is suggested that environmental goods, such as clean air, fresh water, quiet, etc., be treated as sectors in the same way as market goods sectors. The final deliveries of the sectors may be positive, zero or negative, depending on the scarcity of the environ mental goods and political decisions. The paper gives a numerical illustration of how the environmental goods can be valued from an input–output analysis. It is recommended that a system should be devised to adjust the national income estimators of individual countries for the changes in the environmental goods caused by the economic activities of these countries.

This publication has 8 references indexed in Scilit: