This paper presents a societal level exergy analysis approach developed to analyse transitions in the way that energy is supplied and contributes to economic growth in the UK, the US, Austria and Japan, throughout the last century. We assess changes in exergy and useful work consumption, energy...

In this article we consider the underlying imperatives driving the trend toward eco-efficiency and, especially, asset recovery, at the firm level. We show how the enormous potential for adding value while reducing material inputs can be realized in almost every sector of the economy. Many of...

Robert Ayres asks a number of questions relating to technology, progress and economic growth. How far is human welfare attributable to science and technological progress rather than to economic growth, or vice versa? Can technological progress negatively impact on economic growth and employment?...

We show that the application of flexible semi-parametric statistical techniques enables significant improvements in model fitting of macroeconomic models. As applied to the explanation of the past economic growth (since 1900) in US, UK and Japan, the new results demonstrate quite conclusively...

In their 1963 classic Scarcity and Growth Howard Barnett and Chandler Morse argued that resource scarcity did not threaten economic growth. A second investigation in the late 1970s, Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered, reached largely the same conclusion. The 25 years since that work was published...

There is a sharp disagreement between mainstream economists and advocates of energy efficiency as regards the potential for “free lunches” or “no regrets” policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions. From an economics perspective, the critical question is whether the economic system is —...

Economists are increasingly interested in forecasting future costs and benefits of policies for dealing with materials/energy fluxes, polluting emissions and environmental impacts on various scales, from sectoral to global. Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models are currently popular...