Sustainability : Behavior, Property Rights and Economic Growth

This paper argues that the notion of sustainability as used in the extant literature is incomplete because of two reasons: (i) a neglect of the spatial dimensions of sustainability and (ii) the absence of a link between sustainability on the one hand and change in behavior on the other. This paper tries to address the second issue and argues that the task of attaining sustainability essentially involves a paradigm shift in which environmental goods are first treated as merit goods in order to effect behavioral changes and ultimately as common resources. The outline of a simple fiscal policy that would attain this is also discussed