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There is widespread concern for long-term environmental issues in relation to economic processes and developments. Among the concerned scientists are economists, who have taken up the challenge to apply economic insights and tools for the study of long-term environment-economy interactions, and to give the concept of sustainable development 'economic hands and feet'. This book presents a pluralistic perspective on efforts, problems and successes in this area. This collection of papers was originally prepared for an international symposium titled Economic Modelling of Sustainable Development: Between Theory and Practice, which was hosted by the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, on December 20th 1996. The main motivation for this symposium was that the usefulness of the concept of sustainable development for theoretical and applied modelling is still being debated; growth theorists, resource economists, ecological economists, policy makers and many others are trying to deal with the concept in various, and sometimes conflicting, ways. The aim of the symposium was to bring together different theoretical and implementational perspectives on modelling for sustainable development. We hope that this volume will inform a wide audience about the perspectives and progress in this important area of research, as well as stimulate further research, notably on applied modelling and practical methods for the analysis of sustainable development at various (spatial) scales. The papers have, in due course, been revised several times based on comments made by discus sants, referees and the editors.
List of contents
1. Sustainable Development and Formal Models: background and summary.- I: Theoretical Approaches.- 2. A Survey of Economic Modelling of Sustainable Development Jeroen.- 3. Technological Change, Economic Growth and Sustainability.- 4. Evolutionary Complex Systems and Sustainable Development.- 5. Theoretical Aspects of the Economic Modelling of Sustainable Development.- II: Empirical Testing and Delinking.- 6. Indicators of Natural Resource Scarcity: review, synthesis, and application to US agriculture.- 7. The Environmental Kuznets Curve.- 8. Delinking, Relinking and the Perception of Resource Scarcity.- III: Measurement and Implementation.- 9. The Measurement of Sustainable Development.- 10. Industrial Metabolism: work in progress.- 11. On the Paradigmatic and Spatial Dependency of Indicators.- 12. Macroeconomic Modelling for Sustainable Development: the Dutch experience.- 13. Multidimensional Sustainability Analysis: the Flag model.- IV: Policy and the International Dimension.- 14. Economic Aspects of Global Environmental Models.- 15. The International Policy Dimension of Sustainabilitythe effect of policy harmonization within the EU using the GEM-E3 model.- 16. Policy Models for International Environmental Problems.
