“超越GDP”议程的持续重要性

The Continued Importance of the “Beyond GDP”Agenda

本文考察了自2009年成立"经济表现和社会进步测度委员会"以来发生的变化,描述了经济表现和社会进步高级别专家小组(High-Level Expert Group,HLEG)在评估一个国家的运行状况时,对"超越GDP"做出的贡献,制定更广泛的指标仪表盘来反映出诸如福利分配和可持续性在各个方面的关切。我们面临的挑战是要在两种情况下找到平衡:要使仪表盘小到易于理解,大到足以概括我们最关心的东西。本文认为,政府的测度指标强烈影响着他们的行为。例如,如果他们通常不把收入不平等或经济不安全纳入指标仪表盘中,他们可能无法注意到这些情况正在恶化。本文还认为,失真的指标可能导致错误的评估。例如,仅仅以GDP衡量经济是否成功时,却无法衡量经济活动对环境造成的潜在损害。

This Paper looks at what has changed since the 2009 Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress.It describes the contribution of the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress(HLEG)to moving"Beyond GDP"when assessing a country’s health,towards a broader dashboard of indicators that would reflect concerns such as the distribution of wellbeing and sustainability in all of its dimensions.The challenge is to make the dashboard small enough to be easily comprehensible,but large enough to include a summary of what we care about the most.This paper argues that what governments measure strongly influences what they do.If they do not regularly include income inequality or economic insecurity in their dashboard of indicators,for example,they may not notice that these are getting worse.This paper also argues that distorted metrics can lead to misleading assessments,for example when gauging success solely through the lens of GDP while failing to measure the potential environmental damages caused by economic activities.