Some Theoretical Connections Among Wealth, Income, Sustainability, and Accounting / Martin L. Weitzman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weitzman, Martin L.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w22060.

NBER working paper series no. w22060

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2016.

Summary:

In theory, and under some quite strong assumptions, there exists an important rigorous quantitative relationship among the following four fundamental economic concepts: (1) "wealth"; (2) "income"; (3) "sustainability"; (4) "accounting". These four basic concepts are placed in quotation marks here because a necessary first step will be to carefully and rigorously define what exactly is meant by each concept. In this paper, I review what is known about this important four-fold quantitative relationship in an ultra-simplified setting. I identify some basic applications of this simplified economic theory of wealth and income (and sustainability and accounting). While the contents of this paper are expressed at a very high level of abstraction and require some restrictive assumptions, I believe that the fundamental four-fold relationship it sharply highlights is useful for understanding, at least in principle, what is "wealth" and what is its theoretical relationship to "income," "sustainability," and "accounting."

Notes:

Print version record

March 2016.