Social common capital provides members of society with those services and institutional arrangements that are crucial in maintaining human and cultural life. The term "social common capital" is comprised of three categories: natural capital, social infrastructure, and institutional capital. Natural capital consists of all natural environment and natural resources including the earth's atmosphere. Social infrastructure consists of roads, bridges, public transportation systems, electricity, and other public utilities. Institutional capital includes hospitals, educational institutions, judicial and police systems, public administrative services, financial and monetary institutions, and cultural capital. This book attempts to modify and extend the theoretical premises of orthodox economic theory to make them broad enough to analyze the economic implications of social common capital. It further aims to find the institutional arrangements and policy measures that will bring about the optimal state of affairs in which the natural and institutional components are blended together harmoniously to realize the sustainable state as suggested by John Stuart Mill.
Author: Hirofumi Uzawa Publisher: Cambridge University Press Published: 06/06/2005 Pages: 418 Binding Type: Hardcover Weight: 1.40lbs Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.00d ISBN: 9780521847889
About the Author Uzawa, Hirofumi: - Hirofumi Uzawa is Director of the Research Center of Social Common Capital at Doshisha University and Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo. He has been one of the leading economic theorists for the past four decades. In recent years, he has become well known for applied research in the areas of the economics of pollution, environmental disruption, and global warming. Professor Uzawa is the author of more than twenty books, including Preference, Production, and Capital: Selected Papers of Hirofumi Uzawa (Cambridge University Press, 1988) and Economic Theory and Global Warming (Cambridge University Press, 2003). The government of Japan designated him a Person of Cultural Merit in 1983, and the Emperor of Japan conferred the Order of Culture upon him in 1997.
