Report by the commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress
Report by the commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress
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发表时间：
2011-10
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通讯作者：
Jean-Paul Fitoussi;Amartya Sen;Joseph E. Stiglitz
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作者：
Jean-Paul Fitoussi;Amartya Sen;Joseph E. Stiglitz
由于国内生产总值是衡量市场容量而不是经济福祉的指标，本报告旨在更准确地了解任何特定国家的社会进步指标。国内生产总值（GDP）是最广泛使用的经济活动衡量标准。国际上有计算这一数字的标准，人们对其统计和概念基础进行了大量思考。但GDP主要衡量市场生产，尽管它经常被视为衡量经济福祉的指标。将两者混为一谈可能导致对人们的富裕程度的误导，并导致错误的政策决定。衡量经济表现和生活水平的货币指标之所以在我们的社会中发挥如此重要的作用，原因之一是，商品和服务的货币估值使得将性质截然不同的数量相加变得容易。当我们知道苹果汁和DVD播放机的价格时，我们可以把它们的价值加起来，用一个数字来说明生产和消费。但市场价格不仅仅是一种会计手段。经济学理论告诉我们，当市场正常运行时，一种市场价格与另一种市场价格的比率反映了购买者对这两种产品的相对升值。此外，GDP涵盖了经济中的所有最终产品，无论它们是由家庭、企业还是政府消费。因此，用它们的价格来衡量它们的价值似乎是一个很好的方法，可以用一个单一的数字来衡量社会在特定时刻的富裕程度。此外，保持价格不变，同时观察进入GDP的商品和服务数量如何随时间推移而变化，似乎是一种合理的方式，可以说明社会生活水平如何以真实的方式演变。事实证明，事情更加复杂。首先，某些商品和服务的价格可能不存在（例如，如果政府提供免费医疗保险或家庭从事儿童保育），这就提出了如何评估这些服务的问题。其次，即使存在市场价格，它们也可能偏离社会的基本价值。特别是，当特定产品的消费或生产影响到整个社会时，个人为这些产品支付的价格将不同于它们对整个社会的价值。生产或消费活动造成的环境损害没有反映在市场价格中，这是一个众所周知的例子。
As GDP is a measure of market capacity and not economic well-being, this report has been commissioned to more accurately understand the social progress indicators of any given state. Gross domestic product (GDP) is the most widely used measure of economic activity. There are international standards for its calculation, and much thought has gone into its statistical and conceptual bases. But GDP mainly measures market production, though it has often been treated as if it were a measure of economic well-being. Conflating the two can lead to misleading indications about how well-off people are and entail the wrong policy decisions. One reason why money measures of economic performance and living standards have come to play such an important role in our societies is that the monetary valuation of goods and services makes it easy to add up quantities of a very different nature. When we know the prices of apple juice and DVD players, we can add up their values and make statements about production and consumption in a single figure. But market prices are more than an accounting device. Economic theory tells us that when markets are functioning properly, the ratio of one market price to another is reflective of the relative appreciation of the two products by those who purchase them. Moreover, GDP captures all final goods in the economy, whether they are consumed by households, firms or government. Valuing them with their prices would thus seem to be a good way of capturing, in a single number, how well-off society is at a particular moment. Furthermore, keeping prices unchanged while observing how quantities of goods and services that enter GDP move over time would seem like a reasonable way of making a statement about how society’s living standards are evolving in real terms. As it turns out, things are more complicated. First, prices may not exist for some goods and services (if for instance government provides free health insurance or if households are engaged in child care), raising the question of how these services should be valued. Second, even where there are market prices, they may deviate from society’s underlying valuation. In particular, when the consumption or production of particular products affects society as a whole, the price that individuals pay for those products will differ from their value to society at large. Environmental damage caused by production or consumption activities that is not reflected in market prices is a well-known example.