Sustainable growth: Compatibility between a plausible growth criterion and the initial state

There is a large body of research devoted to understanding sustainable growth in resource-based economies. Some of this research cannot be applied to real economies directly because the initial states of real economies do not match the initial states assumed in the models. Using a model of theDasgupta-Heal-Solow-Stiglitz variety the paper shows that inconsistency between assumed and actual initial states can lead to a less desirable, in particular, a Pareto inferior path of consumption per capita. The paper also presents a methodology for constructing transition paths from an imperfect initial state to an initial state compatible with the standard steady state consumption path.