Sustainability and Economics: A Matter of Scale?

Sustainability is a global issue concerning future generations, but steps towards sustainable development must also be taken at the spatial scales of regions and at the temporal scales of individual lives. Different scales matter in social networks and in cultural realities, too. The fact that relatively small regions can dominate global markets for products based on continuous innovation points to the accumulation of a specific social capital in these regions. This resource is a club good at the regional scale. Similar goods exist at national scales. Their development depends to a considerable extent on expectations that play a very different role in the short and in the long run. In the former, the efficient market hypothesis seems a reasonable approach. In the latter, very different approaches need to be developed. Understanding how processes at the regional, national and global level interact in the short and in the long run will be vital for a successful management of the transition towards a sustainable world economy.