Natural Resources in the Theory of Production: The Georgescu-Roegen/Daly versus Solow/Stiglitz Controversy

Quentin Couix

Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) from HAL

Abstract: This paper provides a theoretical and methodological account of an important controversy between neoclassical resources economics and ecological economics, from the early 1970s to the end of the 1990s. It shows that the assumption of unbounded resources productivity in the work of Solow and Stiglitz, and the related concepts of substitution and technical progress, rest on a model-based methodology. On the other hand, Georgescu-Roegen's assumption of thermodynamic limits to production, later revived by Daly, comes from a methodology of interdisciplinary consistency. I conclude that neither side provided a definitive proof of its own claim because both face important conceptual issues.

Keywords: Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen; Robert Solow; Joseph Stiglitz; natural resources; theory of production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-10-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-his, nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-pke
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02332485v1
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Natural resources in the theory of production: the Georgescu-Roegen/Daly versus Solow/Stiglitz controversy (2019)
Working Paper: Natural resources in the theory of production: the Georgescu-Roegen/Daly versus Solow/Stiglitz controversy (2019)
Working Paper: Natural Resources in the Theory of Production: The Georgescu-Roegen/Daly versus Solow/Stiglitz Controversy (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-02332485

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