Optimality or Sustainability?

Sustainability , Optimality , and Development Policy

Considering sustainability a matter of intergenerational welfare equity, this paper examines whether an optimal development path can also be sustainable. It argues that the general “zero-net-aggregateinvestment” condition for an optimal development path to be sustainable in the sense of the maximin criterion of intergenerational justice is too demanding to be practical, especially in the contex...

Sustainability, Optimality, and Viability in the Ramsey model

The Ramsey model of economic growth is revisited from the point of view of viability compared to optimality. A viable state is a state from which there exists at least one trajectory in capital, consumption, and reproduction that remains in the set of constraints of minimal consumption and positive wealth. There exists a largest set of viable states, including all others, called the viability k...

Sustainability: Virtuous or Vulgar?

Progress in understanding and achieving sustainability requires addressing it as both a scientific and an ethical issue. If sustainability is defined as “meeting human needs in a socially just manner without depriving ecosystems of their health,” most of the words in its definition are normative or value laden. Depending on how critical normative terms such as “human needs” and “ecosystem healt...

Globalization and Sustainability: Conflict or Convergence?

Pathways to Sustainability: Evolution or Revolution?

The purposes of this chapter is to delve more deeply into the processes and determinants of technological, organisational, and social innovation and to discuss their implications for selecting instruments and policies to stimulate the kinds of innovation necessary for the transformation of industrial societies into sustainable ones. Sustainable development must be seen as a broad concept, incor...