Prosperity in the Creative Age

Comparing national economies is something economists do all the time, but comparing regional economies in different nations is much more difficult. While modern research points to regional competition driving wealth creation, a lack of comparable datasets has limited the kind of detailed comparisons that would help us better understand how wealth is created in regions.

Prosperity in the Creative Age is a major project to build a global set of regional data to help make such useful comparisons. While we include traditional economic variables like GDP per capita and income distribution in our work, we also consider other, non-traditional factors that help us understand and measure regional prosperity.

Our vision of prosperity is built around four factors:

1. Traditional Economic Measures like GDP, GDP per capita, wage levels, productivity levels, distribution of regional resources, housing values, and so on. These traditional factors are still of major importance. One notable finding is that the most creative regions with the highest living standards are becoming the most economically unequal.

2. Quality of Life Aspects like environmental measures, quality of education, quality of health care, inclusiveness, arts and culture, and so on. These factors are often closely related to overall economic development.

3. Attractiveness of Place- What development has happened over the last two decades? Do people feel that the region is developing in the right direction? Is the region attracting new people and do they stay?

4 Relative Position – Where does the region rank, nationally and globally?

Our aim is to use these four factors to develop two versions of a “global prosperity index”. The first is a standard index to help compare and benchmark regions around the world. The second is a more complex index that the MPI can tailor according to the priorities of a region, helping policymakers perform an analysis that reflects the unique characteristics of their city.

We are also working on a separate project that applies many of these ideas to a report on the future of the economy and workforce of Ontario, the province where the MPI’s head office is located.

THE MARTIN PROSPERITY INSTITUTE AT AGENDACAMP
AgendaCamp is a project, led by TVOntario’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin, to explore the challenges facing the places and sectors that shape Ontario’s economy. Martin Prosperity Institute researchers are contributing to the open workshop component of AgendaCamp, its collaborative wiki and other online tools, and its on-air television broadcast.

View the presentations by MPI researchers:

Learn more about AgendaCamp. . .

TEAM
Richard Florida, Director

Kevin Stolarick, Research Director

Charlotta Mellander, Research Director of the Prosperity Institute of Scandinavia

Ronnie Sanders, Research Assistant

CONTACT
Ronnie Sanders, Research Assistant

Telephone: (416) 673-8583
Email: [email protected]