Representing Intentional Communities: A Stock-Flow Consistent Post-Keynesian Model

The post-growth literature challenges macroeconomists to devise analytical frameworks targeting human well-being and environmental sustainability, rather than growth. This paper meets this challenge by offering a sub-model for intentional communities – that is, groups of people living together and sharing resources who associate with each other based on their explicit, shared values. The sub-model consists of demographic, stockflow consistent input-output (SFC-IO), and behavioural components. The components are constructed after a selective review of the literature on intentional communities. Among the most important behavioural relationships are the specifications for consumption and investment. Both because of sharing and because of sufficiency-oriented values, consumption per person in communities can be well below that in the broader economy and may grow much more slowly. Investment is guided by the need to cover expenditures and the desire to allocate some time towards shared income-generating activities. While intentional communities are home to a negligibly small number of people today, in a counterfactual future in which they become significant, their very different motivations for consuming and producing can influence macroeconomic trajectories.