By means of some simple examples from economics, we elucidatecertain solution tools for the solution of optimal control problems were the system under study undergoes major changes when certain boundaries are crossed. The "major changes" may be that the state gets a jump discontinuity when...

This paper contains a critical assessment of the claim that nnp can be used for welfare comparisons. The analysis assumes that national accounts are comprehensive (in particular, “greened” by taking into account environmental amenities and natural resource depletion), but does not assume...

We develop a framework for analyzing national income accounting using a revealed welfare approach that is sufficiently general to cover, e.g., both the standard discounted utilitarian and maximin criteria as special cases. We show that the basic welfare properties of comprehensive national...

This paper summarizes assumptions made and results obtained in parts of the literature on welfare and sustainability accounting. I consider five di®erent assumptions that can be imposed independently of each other, producing 32 di®erent combinations. This taxonomy is used to organize results...

We investigate the properties of a new equity condition, "Hammond Equity for the Future" (HEF), capturing the following ethical intuition: A sacrifice by the present generation leading to a uniform gain for all future generations cannot lead to a less desirable utility stream if the present...

Koopmans’s (Econometrica 28, 287–309) axiomatization of discounted utilitarianism is based on seemingly compelling conditions, yet this criterion leads to hard-to-justify outcomes. The present analysis considers a class of sustainable recursive social welfare functions within Koopmans’s...

Following Arrow et al. (2003), this paper considers green national accounting when population is changing and instantaneous well-being depends not only on per capita consumption, but also population size. It is shown that welfare improvement can be indicated by an expanded “genuine savings...

We show that our general result (Withagen and Asheim [8]) on the converse of Hartwick’s rule also applies for the special case of Solow’s model with one capital good and one exhaustible resource. Hence, the criticism by Cairns and Yang [1] of our paper is unfounded.

Norway is often referred to as the prime example of a country that has achieved high growth and low income inequality despite its vast natural resources. This contrasts sharply with many other resource abundant countries, which raises the questions why Norway has succeeded while many other...