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Measuring the immeasurable: a survey of substainability indices

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  • Böhringer, Christoph
  • Jochem, Patrick

Abstract

Sustainability indices for countries provide a one-dimensional metric to valuate country-specific information on the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, environmental, and social conditions. At the policy level, they suggest an unambiguous yardstick against which a country?s development can be measured and even a cross-country comparison can be performed. This paper reviews the explanatory power of various sustainability indices applied in policy practice. We show that these indices fail to fulfill fundamental scientific requirements making them rather useless if not misleading with respect to policy advice.

Suggested Citation

  • Böhringer, Christoph & Jochem, Patrick, 2006. "Measuring the immeasurable: a survey of substainability indices," ZEW Discussion Papers 06-073, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5466
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sustainability Indices; Composite Indicators; Sustainability; Indices;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q01 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - Sustainable Development
    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation

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