The article corrects for two main shortcomings in conventional economic analyses of environmental change. First is the overemphasis placed on income growth, and general disregard for other socioeconomic factors. Second is economists' often oversimplified view of the environment, where...

Employing World Bank data, this article finds that the observed worldwide transition from industrial to service activity has an insignificant long‐term impact on global de‐materialization. Unlike earlier studies that focus on actual material flows for specific sectors, this study considers...