Justifying, Characterizing and Indicating Sustainability

During the last two decades, I have subjected the concept of sustainable development to economic analysis. To a great extent this work has been done in co-operation with my co-authors Wolfgang Buchholz, Bertil Tungodden, Martin Weitzman and Cees Withagen, and it has lead to a series of journal articles. This book presents the results of this research program. The original articles are reproduced. However, I have updated information about references and corrected a few mistakes (mostly typographical). STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK This book consists of 19 chapters. Chapter 1 is new, written as a guide to the book and its content. It also gives an up-to-date survey of relevant literature and its relation to the later chapters. Chapters 219 are reproductions of published articles. The articles are organized into three parts. Part I, which comprises Chaps.27, is concerned with the normative question of how to justify sustainability. Part II, consisting of Chaps.813, considers how sustainable development can be characterized. Finally, in Part III, Chaps.1419 are devoted to the problem of indicating sustainability. Within each part, the initial chapter i.e., Chap.2 for Part I, Chap.8 for Part II and Chap.14 for Part III is an overview article that functions as a survey for the later chapters in the corresponding part.

Brings together two decades of economic research on sustainability in one volume Analyzes sustainability from three different perspectives Addresses sustainable development from prescriptive, descriptive and operational points of view

Klappentext

In 1987 the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) introduced the concept of sustainable development into the political agenda. The notion of sustainability and the need to understand its full implications have sparked much interest and considerable research in various disciplines, including economics.

This volume brings together 18 articles published during the last 20 years, devoted to understanding the concept of sustainable development.

These articles provide economic analysis of this notion from three different perspectives:

• Justifying Sustainability (why care about whether development is sustainable)

• Characterizing Sustainability (what does sustainable development look like)

• Indicating Sustainability (how to tell whether development is sustainable)

  The first part (Justifying Sustainability) analyzes from a normative point of view why it is desirable for our generation to contribute to the implementation of sustainable development.

  The second part (Characterizing Sustainability) describes how manmade capital (both real and human) must be accumulated in order to make up for decreased availability of natural capital.

  The third part (Indicating Sustainability) examines rules and methods for attaining sustainable development for current and future generations.

  Each part begins with an article which functions as a survey. An up to date introduction serves to tie the three parts of the volume together.

  Inhalt
  Justifying Sustainability.- Economic Analysis of Sustainability.- Intergenerational Ethics Under Resource Constraints.- Justifying Sustainability.- Resolving Distributional Conflicts Between Generations.- The Malleability of Undiscounted Utilitarianism as a Criterion of Intergenerational Justice.- Rawlsian Intergenerational Justice as a Markov-perfect Equilibrium in a Resource Technology.- Unjust Intergenerational Allocations.- Characterizing Sustainability.- The Hartwick Rule: Myths and Facts.- Hartwick's Rule in Open Economies.- Capital Gains and 'Net National Product' in Open Economies.- Characterizing Sustainability: The Converse of Hartwick's Rule.- On the Sustainable Program in Solow's Model.- Maximin, Discounting, and Separating Hyperplanes.- Indicating Sustainability.- Green National Accounting for Welfare and Sustainability: A Taxonomy of Assumptions and Results.- Net National Product as an Indicator of Sustainability.- Adjusting Green NNP to Measure Sustainability.- Does NNP Growth Indicate Welfare Improvement?.- A General Approach to Welfare Measurement through National Income Accounting.- Green National Accounting with a Changing Population.