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The aim of the article is to critically analyze Environmentally-Adjusted Multifactor Productivity (EAMP), by considering the Classical-Post-keynesian environmental framework Ecological Macroeconomics, integrated with the Evolutionary Environmental Economics. The paper introduces EAMP as rooted in in neoclassical economics and derived from Cobb-Douglas function with natural resources built by Solow (1974). I present theoretical critiques of EAMP's neoclassical assumptions by developing perspectives from heterodox Ecological Macroconomics literature. Finally, I discuss the shortcomings of EAMP's conceptual framework, making specific reference to the policy debate on Porter Hypothesis. The article puts in evidence how the assumptions of constant returns to scale, perfect competition and perfect input substitutability seriously alter the meaning and promise of sustainability policy. The analysis indicates that EAMP is a poor instrument to study complex issues regarding the promotion and effectiveness of green innovations and should therefore be abandoned to face the great challenges regarding the process of ecological transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of Behavioral Economics poses an important question: does it substitute or complement Neoclassical Economics? This article makes an analysis to identify how the substitution-complementarity issue is highly sensitive to the epistemic context. In particular, the paper distinguishes four epistemological contexts: descriptive, explicative, predictive, and prescriptive. The idea that the behavioral substitute the neoclassical approach in descriptive and explicative contexts is defended; however, there is a complementarity in the predictive and prescriptive contexts, where there are some domains in which the neoclassical approach might still work well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conceives of the market as an institution, and contrasts two theoretical approaches: Institutionalism, with an evolutionary and analytical bias, whose theoretical basis comes from "Old/Original" Institutionalism, and New Institutional Economics, with an analytical, contractual approach, linked to mainstream economics. Both approaches have given relevant contributions, as they consider the importance of institutions for economic performance. The limits of New Institutional Economics are particularly relevant, whose analysis of the operation of markets is centered on the logic of transaction cost economics as a determinant of economic performance. Evolutionary Institutionalism, in turn, sees the market within a broader scope, in which cost economies only partially explains economic performance, but it is not necessarily seen as a determining factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper builds up from a review of some expected, but other quite surprising results regarding country estimates for the year 2000 of genuine saving, a sustainability indicator developed by a World Bank research team. We examine this indicator, founded on neoclassical welfare theory, and discuss one of its major problems. Theoretical developments from ecological economics are then considered, together with insights from Georgescu-Roegen's approach to the production process, in search for an alternative approach. A model with potentially fruitful contributions in this direction is reviewed; it points the course efforts could take enable sustainability evaluations based on a more realistic set of interrelated monetary and biophysical indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]