Towards a Microeconomics for Ecological Sustainability

Peter Söderbaum
Additional contact information
Peter Söderbaum: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Department of Economics Box 7013 750 07 Uppsala

Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, 1994, vol. 5, issue 3, 197-220

Abstract: Environmental problems represent a challenge to economics. The neoclassical view of man as a rational consumer and of firms as profit maximizing entities may be useful for some purposes but does not facilitate a debate about ethics or the social responsibility of business. In this essay ‘political-economic man’ is suggested as an alternative to ‘economic man’ and also organizations are seen as political entities. A view of markets in network terms is furthermore suggested as being complementary to the conventional ideas of supply and demand. Finally, a ‘holistic’ idea of economics is advocated and used as the building stone for alternative approaches to societal decision-making. Together these elements comprise the skeleton of a microeconomics for ecological sustainability.

Date: 1994
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://jie.sagepub.com/content/5/3/197.abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jinter:v:5:y:1994:i:3:p:197-220

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().