An overview is offered of different approaches to economic modelling of sustainable development. First, conceptual-theoretical perspectives on sustainable development are shortly reviewed from the angle of model implications. Next, different model types are discussed. These include neoclassical...

We develop an economic model for fossil-fuel and carbon-free energy supply and demand with capital and labor as production factors, and endogenous technological change through learning by research and learning by doing. We use the model to study inter-temporally efficient carbon taxes for...

In this paper we develop a simple endogenous growth model with two competing production technologies and learning spillover effects between firms that use the same technology. Investments are directed to the technology with highest current and expected returns. Since current investments increase...

Large shocks, such as natural disasters, are often found to have little or no effect on the equilibrium distribution of economic activity across space. Two apparently competing theoretical explanations for this phenomenon are the increasing returns theory and the locational fundamentals theory....

This study investigates the short- and long-run impact on population dynamics of the major flood in the Netherlands in 1953. A dynamic difference-in-differences analysis reveals that the flood had an immediate negative impact on population growth, but limited long term effects. In contrast, the...

This paper shows in an empirical context that substantial cost reductions can be achieved in the implementation of Dutch national climate policy by (i) targeting the policy at the stock of greenhouse gases, thus allowing polluters flexibility in their timing of emission reductions; and (ii)...

We raise fundamental questions about macroeconomics relevant to escaping the financial-economic crisis and shifting to a sustainable economy. First, the feasibility of decoupling environmental pressure from aggregate income is considered. Decoupling as a single environmental strategy is found to...

The debate on growth versus the environment is usually summarized as optimists believing in limitless growth versus pessimists seeing environmental and resource limits to growth. This opposition defines the main strategies: namely, striving for green growth versus some anti-growth approach. In...

We consider the microfoundations controversy from the perspective of economic evolution. Although the analogy between biology and economics has been noted before, it has rarely focused on clarifying the micro–macro distinction in economic theory and modelling. The micro–macro debate is more...

The search for a framework to study globalisation, economics and ecology for nature conservation andbiodiversity protection requires the integration of concepts, theories and models from economics andecology. This allows for the study of interactions between economic and ecological processes,...