Attractiveness of Regions and Sustainable Regional Economic System, 1st ed. 2024
As a Measure of Social Welfare Function
New Frontiers in Regional Science: Asian Perspectives Series, Vol. 100

The primary objective of this book is to address a formal representation of household economy in welfare economics in spatial terms. Although it has been argued since the nineteenth century that in exploring a reasonable indicator to measure the real welfare level of households, several difficulties remain to be faced in economic theory. The most relevant method in this specific topic is social welfare function. While various types of indicators were historically developed and improved as a replacement of existing economic growth indicators such as GDP and GRP using social welfare function, there still is a problem with evaluating the individual?s utility as an aggregate term. As an alternative method of measuring the real welfare level of households, location theory may be a possibility for solving some potentially problematic issues. To be precise, location theory requires the inclusion of notions of transportation costs, spatially constrained internal and external economies, and other distance-related variables. From the standpoint of equality, this specific approach enables an analysis to investigate spatial differentiation. In other words, spatial differentiation of households can be interpreted as spatial consumer exclusion. Hence, the real welfare level of households can be measured by means of the accessibility of goods and services, of which there are several types, such as essential and luxury ones. As a result, spatial distribution of goods and services depending on their types can be considered a component of social welfare function. The topics addressed in the book include social welfare function in spatial terms, location theory related to firms and households, attractiveness of regions, economic and social infrastructure elements, and sustainable growth and development of regions. 

Daisuke Nakamura, Associate Professor, Department of International Liberal Arts, International College of Arts and Sciences, Fukuoka, Japan