IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijgrec/v4y2010i4p346-359.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustainable development: equal treatment of the present and the future?

Author

Listed:
  • Graciela Chichilnisky

Abstract

This article provides two axioms that capture the idea of sustainable development, and characterises the welfare criterion that they imply. It presents a formal theory of sustainable development, created by the author (Chichilnisky, 1996a, 1997). The axioms require that neither the present nor the future should play a dictatorial role in society's choices over time. Theorems 1 and 2 show that there exist sustainable preferences which satisfy these axioms and provide a full characterisation. Theorems 3 to 5 study a standard dynamical system representing the growth of a renewable-resource economy, give a 'turnpike' theorem, and exhibit the differences between sustainable optima and the ones according to discounted utilitarianism. (JEL 013)

Suggested Citation

  • Graciela Chichilnisky, 2010. "Sustainable development: equal treatment of the present and the future?," International Journal of Green Economics, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 4(4), pages 346-359.
  • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijgrec:v:4:y:2010:i:4:p:346-359
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=37656
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijgrec:v:4:y:2010:i:4:p:346-359. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=158 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.