Economic Analysis of Social Common Capital

Social common capital provides members of society with those services and institutional arrangements that are crucial in maintaining human and cultural life. Social common capital is comprised of three categories: natural capital, social infrastructure, and institutional capital. Natural capital consists of natural environment and resources including the Earth's atmosphere. Social infrastructure consists of roads, bridges, public transportation systems, and public utilities. Institutional capital includes hospitals, educational institutions, judicial and police systems, public administrative services, financial and monetary institutions, and cultural capital. This 2005 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 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.

'Uzawa has again contributed to the economic analysis of socially important problems. His treatment of social common capital shows the power of economic theory and is marked by Uzawa's customary clarity of exposition and mastery of analysis.' Kenneth Arrow, Nobel Laureate, Stanford University, 'Professor Uzawa pioneered the economics of social common capital decades before it received the empirical attention it deserved. If theoretical explorations of the subject haven't received a contemporary airing, here it is. This is vintage Uzawa: deep, elegant, and highly relevant.' Sir Partha Dasgupta, University of Cambridge, 'In this masterful volume, using the tools of mathematical economics, Hirofumi Uzawa shows how economic performance is critically tied to what he terms 'social common capital' – collective goods that must be provisioned through social and political mechanisms that lie beyond the market. The volume is an intriguing and accomplished piece of work by a highly distinguished scholar.' Richard Howarth, Dartmouth College, 'No one but Hiro Uzawa could produce so precise, careful, and complete an analysis of the main forms of common property resources to be found in modern industrial society. Fortunately he has done it and provided about as much intellectual unity as seems appropriate. Filling in the worldly details will be worked on by many people for many years, but now there is a framework, indeed a common resource.' Robert Solow, Nobel Laureate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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.