The IPAT-model developed by Ehrlich and Holdren is widespread in ecological economics in order to quantify the impact of population growth on environmental deterioration. We comment on this model and extensions proposed by several authors from a theoretical and empirical point of view.

In this paper, we investigate the external effects of the parent's decisions on the number of newly born children and the firm's decisions on the amount of polluting emissions that occur in industrial production. We employ an optimal control model which comprises three stock variables...

Resilience as a descriptive concept gives insight into the dynamic properties of a system. Sustainability as a normative concept captures basic ideas of inter- and intragenerational justice. In this paper we specify the relationship between resilience and sustainable development. Based on an...

We develop and formalize a utilitarian notion of responsibility for sustainability which is inspired by Singer‟s (1972) principle and the Brundtland Commission‟s notion of sustainability (WCED 1987). We relate this notion of responsibility to established criteria for the assessment of...

We demonstrate the existence of an intergenerational equity-efficiency trade- off in policy-making that aims at Pareto-efficiency across generations and sustainability, i.e. non-decreasing utility over time. Our model includes two salient characteristics of sustainability problems and policy:...

Strong sustainability, according to the common definition, requires that different natural and economic capital stocks have to be maintained as physical quantities separately. Yet, in a world of uncertainty this cannot be guaranteed. To therefore define strong sustainability under uncertainty in...