Promoting new indicators of wealth: an unsuccessful cause
Working paper by Dominique Méda
The text focuses on the twofold movement to question GDP, with very different aims, both by a small current of thought known as the "new wealth indicators" that has been developing in France since the end of the 1990s and by several international institutions. After the Stiglitz Commission, the results of which are analysed, attempts to officialise a small number of indicators, notably with the SAS law, will not succeed in imposing themselves, any more than the indicators proposed by the World Bank. The battle of indicators - which is also a battle to determine new cognitive frameworks and new reference frameworks - is not over.
The author
Dominique Méda is Professor of Sociology, Director of IRISSO, Paris Dauphine-PSL University.
Citing this document: Dominique Méda, Promouvoir de nouveaux indicateurs de richesse : histoire d’une « cause » inaboutie, FMSH-WP-2020-145, juin 2020.