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Abstract: Policy prescriptions for sustainable consumption have been dominated by neoclassical economics, which is built around the notions of market equilibrium, utility maximization, and exogenous preferences. There are concerns that neoclassical economics is inadequate to guide policy prescriptions in the presence of evolving preferences and complex dynamics. Evolutionary economics provides a more realistic account of individual behavior underlying economic processes. It offers a framework for studying complex socio-economic interactions and exploring their properties. As a consequence, it may offer a better approach for the analysis of policies aimed at inducing fundamental changes in behaviors, technologies and institutions in the direction of increased sustainability. However, a coherent evolutionary-economic approach to economic policies has been missing so far. In particular, policy criteria for evaluating evolutionary outcomes and processes are ambiguous. The paper discusses the implications of employing the evolutionary-economic approaches to study sustainable consumption and policy from different ethical standpoints. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

For simplicity and due to the assumption of substitutability of natural capital with built capital, after about 1880, Anglo-American economists took nature out of economics altogether SP 17 sp , as explicitly postulated by Robert Solow SP 18 sp . Another issue that classical political economy or a more ecologically-oriented view of economics will be better able to address has to do with the tendency of industrial economies tend to overproduce - whether capitalist, communist, socialist, social democratic, or capitalist communist. "The Economics of Resources and the Resources of Economics", American Economic Review 64(2): 1-14. [Extracted from the article]