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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]

Some of the most important and urgent topics requiring economic analysis and policy advice are the problems of climate change and environmental sustainability, and what can be done to alter corporate and individual behaviour to deal with these issues. Neoclassical economists tend to focus on market solutions such as carbon trading, drawing on ideas of perfect rationality of actors and the appropriateness of ‘marginal’ analysis. To link such policies to the whole range of potential actions, from legislative and regulatory to changing individual behaviours, requires the economy and society to be analysed in its full complexity, recognising that ‘marginal’ analysis can be not just irrelevant but positively harmful when the need is for systemic shifts in economic and social trajectories. This article draws upon a seminar series on complexity economics to consider how heterodox economic analysis can be brought to bear on the issue of the environment, to develop a realistic policy agenda for change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]