Discounted utilitarianism treats generations unequally and leads to seemingly unappealing consequences in some models of economic growth. Instead, this paper presents and applies sustainable discounted utilitarianism (SDU). SDU respects the interests of future generations and resolves...

For a class of aggregative optimal growth models, which allow for a non-convex and non-differentiable production technology, this paper examines whether the set of utilitarian maximal programs coincides with the set of weakly maximal programs. It identifies a condition, called the...

We examine whether the Phelps-Koopmans theorem is valid in models with nonconvex production technologies. We show by example that a nonstationary path that converges to a capital stock above the smallest golden rule may indeed be efficient. This finding has the important implication that...