Changing the Priorities: From Labour Productivity to the Efficiency in the Use of Resources

An Environmentally Ineffective Way to Increase Resource Productivity: Evidence from the Italian Case on Transferring the Burden Abroad

“…The rise of RP as represented by GDP/DMC has been indeed much faster than the rise of Labour Productivity and of Energy Productivity. What these indicators seem to show is that Italy is moving in the right direction, in line with "the need to put a drastic increase in natural resource use efficiency among the primary societal goals, and to assign a very high priority level to this goal, even higher than that currently attached to Labour Productivity's growth" [10]. However, if more comprehensive indicators of a country's resource use are adopted, Italy's RP proves neither to be as high as it seems, nor to grow as fast as it seems.…”

“…Indeed, this concept stems from a mechanical extension of the usual economic productivity concepts. As such, under a well-being beyond-GDP perspective [9], its adequateness in face of the present world's policy challenges may be questioned [10]. Although the present paper focuses mainly on specific issues concerning the measurement of RP, it is important, before going into technicalities, to stress this general limit of the RP concept-which clearly emerges by comparing it with the MIPS concept-as this limit defines the framework within which the issues we tackle are relevant.…”

“…A rather important comparison is the one between RP and Labour Productivity (LP) dynamics. Indeed, if the labour input does not change, in order to have absolute decoupling of GDP from DMC (i.e., decreasing DMC notwithstanding economic growth), RP must grow more quickly than LP [10]. Table 2 compares the Italian Labour, Energy and Resource Productivities in the 1991-2010 period.…”