Wealth and Welfare

Welfare, Wealth and Sustainability

Growing concerns over climate change and the potential for large damages due to non-linear processes underscore the need for meaningful sustainability assessment of an economy. Economists have developed rigorous approaches to conceptualizing sustainability based on the paradigm of weak sustainability, which assumes infinite substitution between manufactured and natural capital stocks. In contra...

Economic shocks, wealth and welfare

The immediate effects of the Asian crisis on the well-being of Indonesians are examined using the Indonesia Family Life Survey, an on-going longitudinal household survey. There is tremendous diversity in the effect of the shock: for some households, it was devastating; for others it brought new opportunities. A wide array of mechanisms were adopted in response to the crisis. Households combined...

Welfare Implications of Net Social Security Wealth

Real net social wealth (NSSW), the real present value of social security benefits received minus social security taxes paid, is frequently used as a direct proxy measure for the impact of a social security system on generation welfare. The present paper establishes to the contrary, for a class of overlapping generation economies, that NSSW can be simultaneously negatively correlated with welfar...

Shareholder Wealth Maximization and Social Welfare: A Utilitarian Critique

Many scholars and managers endorse the idea that the primary purpose of the !rm is to make money for its owners. This shareholder wealth maximization objective is justi!ed on the grounds that it maximizes social welfare. In this article, the !rst of a two-part set, we argue that, although this shareholder primacy model may have been appropriate in an earlier era, it no longer is, given our curr...

Parental Wealth and Adult Children’s Welfare in Marriage