The use of GDP growth as an indicator of national progress has many critics. Ahluwalia and Chenery noted that GDP growth places greater weight on the income growth of richer income groups, and proposed distribution-neutral and pro-poor alternatives. More recently, studies by the World Resources Institute and others have questioned the sustainability of GDP growth and have introduced natural resource modifications to national income accounting. To date, no studies have undertaken both types of revisions concurrently, creating a revised sustainable development measure based on GDP but corrected for both distributional bias and resource depletion. This dissertation adjusts GDP growth for both concerns, developing an indicator that reflects both the social and the environmental changes that often accompany rapid GDP growth. This sustainable development framework is applied to the case of Brazil, a country that has, in addition to experiencing rapid economic growth in recent decades, suffered massive deforestation and worsened income inequality. First, the Brazilian income accounts are adjusted for the marketable value loss associated with depletion in the mineral, commercial wood, and soil accounts. Next, the estimated value of non-marketable—e.g., indirect, option, and existence—benefits lost as a consequence of Amazonian deforestation are deducted from the revised accounts. Finally, annual growth in the adjusted indicator is compared to growth under the distribution-neutral and pro-poor weighting schemes, following Ahluwalia and Chenery. The three weighting schemes—denoted GDP, equal, and poverty weights—are also applied to the allocation of social cost associated with resource depletion, generating nine possible outcomes. The results of this dissertation cast doubt on the proposition that rapid economic growth in Brazil has resulted in comparable welfare gains. Moreover, the evidence presented illustrates the often unsustainable nature of rapid GDP growth phases. The chief policy implication is that Brazil should discontinue—or at least severely curtail—the regressive and resource-intensive economic policies it has followed in recent decades, in the interest of welfare improvement not only for the poorer groups in society, but for future generations of Brazilians as well.

This dissertation is a collection of four essays that question the behavioral assumptions of economics and aim to provide a richer model of redistributive politics than that based on traditional assumptions of exogenous, self-regarding, and outcome-oriented preferences. I argue that an enriched model of redistribution is necessary, and attempt to provide empirical evidence of endogenous, other-regarding, and non-outcome-oriented preferences that might explain puzzles which the traditional model cannot. The assumption of self-interest is particularly ill-suited for the study of redistributive politics. Preferences for redistribution may be influenced by values and beliefs about distributive justice as well as by self-interest. People may prefer more redistribution to the poor if they believe that poverty is caused by circumstances beyond individual control. Alternatively, the effect of these beliefs on redistributive preferences may be spurious if they are correlated with income, and self-interest is not properly controlled for. They may also measure incentive cost concerns. In Chapter 1, using survey data from the 1998 Gallup Poll Social Audit, I find that self-interest and incentive costs concerns cannot explain the effect of these beliefs on redistributive preferences. I then report three studies designed to investigate the effects of economic experiences and institutions on preferences and behavior. In Chapter II I investigate how beliefs about the effects of effort, luck, and opportunity on income are updated. I model how people may update their beliefs based on comparisons of their actual earnings with expected income. I test the model using the National Longitudinal Surveys. In Chapter III I conduct an experimental test of the effect of minor differences in lottery procedures that which should have no effect according to expected utility theory on bidding behavior. In Chapter IV I investigate the effect of competition among players who bargain over the division of a sum of money on the inequality of the outcome. In these three chapters I find that beliefs about justice may be shaped by poor earnings relative to others, that procedural manipulations of the degree of involvement in income generating procedures may have significant effects on behavior, and that competition may undermine fair behavior.

No description available.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rutgers University, 2007. / "Graduate Program in Food and Business Economics." Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-87).

Thesis (M.Sc. (Mathematics)) - Rhodes University, 2008. / A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mathematics.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-161).