In this chapter both theory and empirics are used to show that our picture of the processes of economic development changes radically when nature is introduced as a capital asset. Particular features of institutions that fashion societies' use of the natural-resource base are identified and...

This paper articulates and applies frameworks for examining whether consumption is excessive. We consider two criteria for the possible excessiveness (or insufficiency) of current consumption. One is an intertemporal utility-maximization criterion: actual current consumption is deemed excessive...

This paper is about measuring social well-being and evaluating policy. Part I is concerned with the links between the two, while Parts II and III, respectively, are devoted to the development of appropriate methods of measuring and evaluating. In Part II (Sections 4-7) I identify a minimal set...

This paper is about net national product (NNP). We are concerned with what NNP means, what it should include, what it offers us and, therefore, why we may be interested in it. We show that NNP, properly defined, can be used as a gauge for project evaluation, but we also show that it should not...

This article examines the links that have recently been studied between poverty, high fertility and undernourishment, on the one hand, and degradation of the local environmental-resource base and civic disconnection, on the other, in poor countries. An account is offered of a number of pathways...

Is knowledge an economic good? Which are the characteristics of the institutions regulating the production and diffusion of knowledge? Cumulation of knowledge is a key determinant of economic growth, but only recently knowledge has moved to the core of economic analysis. Recent literature also...

The rapidly increasing human pressure on the biosphere is pushing biodiversity into the sixth mass extinction event in the history of life on Earth. The organisms being exterminated are integral working parts of our planet's life support system, and their loss is permanent. Like climate change,...