This paper argues that important improvements in the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) can be made by directly calculating the loss of natural resources, the benefits of leisure, and adjusting for inequality using a global norm, rather than using local, historical benchmarks. Local benchmarking is an obstacle to the standardisation and comparability of the GPI. We provide alternative methods for the five components that have used benchmarking in the standard GPI. We present empirical estimates for the GPI of the United States and California over the period 1995 through 2017, calculated with and without the alternative methods. Using our alternative methods, we show that some differences between the GPI of CA and the U.S. are artefacts of the benchmark methods. Implementing the alternative methods narrows the gap between the CA and the U.S. GPI as it reduces the U.S. environmental costs, and removes the artificial differential between CA and the U.S. in the cost of inequality. However, we find that the GPI provides insight into net welfare not reflected in GDP, both with and without the benchmarking methods. Overall, we suggest that the GPI can be significantly improved with these high priority revisions without changing the fundamental approach or theoretical framework.

This chapter takes a broad view of Conscious Capitalism to include national policies, as well as corporate practices and individual lifestyles, that contribute well-being to the population and help to create a thriving market economy that delivers shared prosperity in a sustainable world. Some broad approaches, including Buddhist Economics, also include the goal of creating an economic system where the human spirit can flourish. In Buddhist Economics, interdependence and altruism along with care for the human spirit play a fundamental role. This chapter begins with a brief comparison of Buddhist economics with the mainstream free market (or neoliberal) approach. Free market economics sees average income as the goal, and income distribution and environmental degradation are left to the marketplace to determine. Buddhist economics guides individuals to live a meaningful, happy life connected to others with compassion; guides companies to evaluate performance to include the well-being of all stakeholders; and guides nations to use resources wisely to improve the well-being of all people while living in harmony with nature and other countries. The government and the business community play very different roles in these two economic systems, with the government in a Buddhist economy in charge of structuring the economy to support specific socio-economic goals. The chapter explains how countries decide their level of inequality and environmental destruction by their policy choices. Over the past four decades, economic growth, measured by market (GDP) growth, has increased both inequality and carbon emissions. Then the chapter looks at the evidence that shows higher inequality reduces both individual and national well-being, and inequality also drives carbon emissions within and across nations. This leads to exploring how people can live meaningful and ethical lives, how corporations can contribute to the holistic economy, and how actual government policies can create an equitable, sustainable, caring economy. The Sustainable Shared-Prosperity Policy Index measures government polices across fifty countries and ranks countries according to how well their policies create a sustainable, equitable, just economy for the well-being of all.

Over the centuries, Buddhist monks applied economic models in the operations of their monasteries to make them sustainable while also observing Buddhist principles. The large variety of economic practices observed demonstrate the creativity of monastics in acquiring the resources to support their large monasteries in a way that was viewed as compatible with Buddhist ethics embodied in the Noble Eightfold Path. Researchers have analyzed the integration of faith-based and financially related monastic needs for different countries in different eras. The Buddhist economics approach as it has been developed in the last 40-50 years aims to create an alternative worldview that challenges the main underlying assumptions of Western economics. The mainstream Western economics model is originally based on the following assumptions: rational, selfish behavior; profit-maximization; competitive markets; and instrumental use of the environment. Buddhist economics is based on a different set of assumptions: dependent origination (“pratityasamutpada”), where people are interdependent with each other and with Earth; people are aware of enlightened self-interest based on interdependence and thus are altruistic; firms care about the well-being of workers, customers, shareholders, and community; and all activities include caring for the environment. With these assumptions, the Buddhist economic model has shared prosperity in a sustainable world with minimal suffering as its goal.

In this paper, we estimate the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), which is a measure of sustainable economic welfare, for California for a five-year period, 2010-2014. This relatively short time period, which covers the recovery from a deep recession, allows us to examine how integration of environmental degradation, nonmarket activities, and inequality affects the GPI of California. The California GPI is only 52% of Gross State Product (GSP) comparable to other GPI to GDP proportions because the large negative environmental components offset the large positive social components and because many government expenditures, such as those related to defence and law enforcement, are excluded. Between 2010 and 2014, California GSP grew 9.2% and GPI grew 9.8%. We evaluate our estimation of the California GPI (CA-GPI) in two specific ways. First, we compare California's GPI to an alternative indicator of social welfare, the Human Development Index (HDI) for California. Our comparison points out that the GPI is a more holistic measure of sustainable economic well-being, although the HDI is useful for evaluating educational attainment, life expectancy, or earnings across regions or demographic groups in the state. Second, we compare our estimation of CA-GPI to the California results from a recent GPI estimation for all fifty states for 2011, in order to evaluate how different methodological decisions and data selection affect the results. Our overall estimate is 13 percent higher, with the primary differences reflecting discrepancies in methodological assumptions or data sources in the calculation of a few key variables, including the value of time used for calculating nonmarket activities. These two estimates of CA-GPI allow us to analyze the sensitivity of two widely used approaches for calculating the GPI, and the sensitivity of using California-specific public data sources compared to national public data sources (scaled to California). The variation in the two California GPI estimations demonstrates the importance of standardizing the method and the data sources, with the goal of creating a viable alternative to the GDP for measuring economic performance. Comparison of the two GPI estimations shows how the use of region-specific data increases the accuracy of estimates, which is important for evaluating regional outcomes and trends over time. However, using data and method that prioritizes standardization is essential for cross-regional comparability, even though the trade-off is diminished regional accuracy. The paper concludes with a discussion of the uses of the GPI to evaluate policies, and suggests fruitful steps forward.

This article uses new data to examine how workers' perceptions of the impact of trade on jobs like theirs are related to economic variables representing their career paths, job characteristics, and local labor market conditions. We find that only 17 percent of workers think trade creates jobs. And even fewer workers (4–7 percent) in any industry think trade has created better jobs. We find that workers' perceptions do not reflect their job characteristics or the movability of their jobs. Their perceptions of trade primarily reflect local labor market conditions (hiring and separation rates) and education. The determinants of workers' perceptions of trade present a different pattern compared with their perceptions of job security.

The 2010 National Organizations Survey: Examining the Relationships Between Job Quality and the Domestic and International Sourcing of Business Functions by United States Organizations Clair Brown, University of California at Berkeley (cbrown@econ.berkeley.edu) Timothy Sturgeon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (sturgeon@mit.edu) Connor Cole, University of Michigan (colecp@umich.edu) Working Paper No. 156-13 Final Draft: 12/26/2013 Cite as: Brown, Clair; Sturgeon, Timothy; and Cole, Connor. 2013 The 2010 National Organizations Survey: Examining the Relationships Between Job Quality and the Domestic and International Sourcing of Business Functions by United States Organizations . IRLE Working Paper No. 156-13 This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0926746

Global value chains span national and organizational boundaries in a growing number of industries. Knowledge creation and exchange within these diffuse networks is more complex than in the centralized R&D process of the past. This research, based on extensive fieldwork with engineers and managers in multinational headquarters and subsidiaries in a number of high-tech industries, analyzes alternative modes of managing knowledge workers in this global setting. Strategic human resource management (SHRM), of which formal HR policies are but a small part, is necessary to structure formal and informal network activities, both within and beyond the firm. We compare two archetypal high-performance SHRM systems and describe how they have evolved in practice. We analyze SHRM for global knowledge flows with offshore subsidiaries, value chain partners, allies, acquisitions, and corporate ventures. We also look at knowledge flows in informal personal networks and via the global circulation of knowledge workers. Finally we review lessons learned about SHRM practices to create and manage knowledge workers in global value chains.

How the chip industry has responded to a series of crises over the past twenty-five years, often reinventing itself and shifting the basis for global competitive advantage. For decades the semiconductor industry has been a driver of global economic growth and social change. Semiconductors, particularly the microchips essential to most electronic devices, have transformed computing, communications, entertainment, and industry. In Chips and Change, Clair Brown and Greg Linden trace the industry over more than twenty years through eight technical and competitive crises that forced it to adapt in order to continue its exponential rate of improved chip performance. The industry's changes have in turn shifted the basis on which firms hold or gain global competitive advantage. These eight interrelated crises do not have tidy beginnings and ends. Most, in fact, are still ongoing, often in altered form. The U.S. semiconductor industry's fear that it would be overtaken by Japan in the 1980s, for example, foreshadows current concerns over the new global competitors China and India. The intersecting crises of rising costs for both design and manufacturing are compounded by consumer pressure for lower prices. Other crises discussed in the book include the industry's steady march toward the limits of physics, the fierce competition that keeps its profits modest even as development costs soar, and the global search for engineering talent. Other high-tech industries face crises of their own, and the semiconductor industry has much to teach about how industries are transformed in response to such powerful forces as technological change, shifting product markets, and globalization. Chips and Change also offers insights into how chip firms have developed, defended, and, in some cases, lost global competitive advantage.

For decades the semiconductor industry has been a driver of global economic growth and social change. Semiconductors, particularly the microchips essential to most electronic devices, have transformed computing, communications, entertainment, and industry. In Chips and Change, Clair Brown and Greg Linden trace the industry over more than twenty years through eight technical and competitive crises that forced it to adapt in order to continue its exponential rate of improved chip performance. The industry's changes have in turn shifted the basis on which firms hold or gain global competitive advantage. These eight interrelated crises do not have tidy beginnings and ends. Most, in fact, are still ongoing, often in altered form. The U.S. semiconductor industry's fear that it would be overtaken by Japan in the 1980s, for example, foreshadows current concerns over the new global competitors China and India. The intersecting crises of rising costs for both design and manufacturing are compounded by consumer pressure for lower prices. Other crises discussed in the book include the industry's steady march toward the limits of physics, the fierce competition that keeps its profits modest even as development costs soar, and the global search for engineering talent. Other high-tech industries face crises of their own, and the semiconductor industry has much to teach about how industries are transformed in response to such powerful forces as technological change, shifting product markets, and globalization. Chips and Change also offers insights into how chip firms have developed, defended, and, in some cases, lost global competitive advantage.

This chapter begins with the examination of Japan’s rise to prominence in the semiconductor industry in the 1980s, and discusses the products involved that helped Japanese firms rise to market dominance, as well as the strategies involved. One main product was the dynamic random-access memory chips. The chapter then introduces the manner through which the United States responded to the challenge initiated by the Japanese. One program that raised the yield of US firms was Motorola’s Six Sigma quality program. Third, the chapter explores the turnaround when US industry overtook its Japanese rivals, how their strategies worked, and how the Korean producer Samsung took the top spot in high-volume memory chips. The main lesson which it puts forth is that national competitive advantage is often fleeting, and countries must therefore constantly compete for that top spot in order to cope with the rapidly evolving industry.

This chapter examines two popular theories on the shift in competitive advantage, the first of which states that R&D will shift to Asia, just as chip manufacturing has. This is called the "manufacturing-pull" hypothesis. The second theory, or the "large-market pull," states that China and India, with their rapidly growing economies, will produce national champions primed to becoming world leaders. The first theory is based on the assumption that R&D follows manufacturing, and although engineers in China and India are reportedly less experienced than engineers in the United States, the quality of their university programs continues to improve. The large-market pull theory, on the other hand, assumes that growing markets such as China and India will bring their domestic suppliers competitive advantages. This theory is not very sound, however, when close inspection is made of the steps these countries are taking within the semiconductor industry. In conclusion, it is argued that the threats to today's leaders lie within their own organizations and national economies.