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World Bank Economic ReviewVolume 28, Issue 2, June 2014, Article number lht023, Pages 189-209

Economic development as opportunity equalization(Article)(Open Access)

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  • Yale University, United States

Abstract

Economic development should be conceived of as the degree to which an economy has implemented an efficient and just distribution of economic resources. The ubiquitous measure of GDP per capita reflects a utilitarian conception of justice, where individual utility is defined as personal income, and social welfare is the average of utilities in a population. A more attractive conception of justice is opportunity-equalization. Here, a two-dimensional measure of economic development is proposed, based upon viewing individuals' incomes as a consequence of circumstances, effort, and policy. The first dimension is the average income level of those in the society with the most disadvantaged circumstances, and the second dimension is the degree to which total income inequality is due to differential effort, as opposed to differential circumstances. This pair of numbers is computed for a set of 22 European countries. No country dominates all others on both dimensions. The two-dimensional measure induces a partial ordering of countries with respect to development. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / THE WORLD BANK. All rights reserved.

Indexed keywords

GEOBASE Subject Index:development leveleconomic developmentGross Domestic Productincome distribution
Regional Index:Europe
  • ISSN: 02586770
  • Source Type: Journal
  • Original language: English
  • DOI: 10.1093/wber/lht023
  • Document Type: Article
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press

  Roemer, J.E.; Yale University, United States;
© Copyright 2014 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

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