By Tamora Vidaillet
PARIS, April 26 (Reuters) - The economic crisis has slowed French-backed efforts to find new ways of measuring the economy and assessing wellbeing, but could spur political support for fresh ideas, said Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy commissioned Stiglitz and other top economists last year to assess the limits of gross domestic product as an indicator of economic performance and to propose recommendations for new measures as early as this month. But with the attention of the commission's members firmly fixed on the worst economic conditions in decades, only measured progress had been made, pushing the likely release of the final findings to around September, Stiglitz said in an interview.
"The crisis has highlighted the inadequacies of our measurement system and at the same time the crisis means that people focused on other things," he said.
"It will provide some impetus for people saying look we do all kinds of studies saying countries are doing well if their GDP is high, now we see the U.S. wasn't doing well," he said.
Sarkozy's push to find new ways of measuring economic progress comes as wider debate over the need to recognise the importance of environmental protection and social issues has grown.
Officials from the European Commission and non-governmental organisations in the 27-nation bloc have clamoured in the past for world economies to look beyond headline GDP figures, which represent the total value of goods and services produced.
As the economic crisis has deepened, Sarkozy has championed the need to overhaul the global capitalist system so that it is based more on social foundations.
Stiglitz said the commission, which also features 1998 Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen and involves the OECD, was not seeking to create any simple formulas, rather to offer proposals on how the issues can be dealt with.
"It is more likely to be a roadmap of where national income accountants are going to have to be working," he said.
FRANCE IN LEAD?
France, which has rigid labour laws, exports which have not kept pace with some of its key European neighbours and relatively anaemic economic growth in recent years based on GDP, was likely to fare well if certain measures of wellbeing were considered Stiglitz said.
The study is not focusing on France or developed nations, but aims to offer a template for interested countries.
Still, Stiglitz said that applying potential new measures could show France doing better than the United States in areas like longevity and disease when taking into account not only the amount spent on health but how a country benefits.
While the U.S. spent around 16 percent of GDP on the healthcare sector, it fared worse in outcome terms than France, which spent significantly less, he said.
The commission was looking at innovative ways of measuring economic and environmental sustainability as well as societal wellbeing, which Stiglitz said could comprise leisure factors and peoples' social connectedness.
France, where many have a shorter working week than key European neighbours like the UK, could go up "in a number of categories" if measured differently, said Stiglitz.
Having backed the study, it was hoped that France, the euro zone's second-biggest economy, would take the lead in adopting some of the recommendations made and that other countries might follow suit, he said.
"Our hope is that it will be part of a broader political movement among national authorities in different economies to implement this," he said.
To view the website for the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, click on http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/en/index.htm (Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)