On the Feasibility of Perpetual Growth in a Decentralized Economy Subject to Environmental Constraints

Jean-Francois Fagnart and Marc Germain
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Jean-Francois Fagnart: CEREC, Facultes universitaires Saint-Louis, Brussels and Department of Economics, Universite catholique de Louvain, Louvain- la-Neuve.
Marc Germain: EQUIPPE, Universite de Lille 3 and Department of Economics, Universite catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve

No 2009037, LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)

Abstract: We propose an endogenous growth model of a decentralized economy subject to environmental constraints. In a basic version, we consider an economy where final production requires some material input and where research activities allow simultaneously productive firms to reduce the dependency of their production process on this input and to improve the quality of their output. We adopt a material balance approach and, in spite of the optimistic assumption that the material input is perfectly recyclable (and thus never exhausted), we show that material output growth is always a transitory phenomenon. When it exists, a balanced growth path is necessarily characterized by constant values of the material variables, long term economic growth taking exclusively the form of perpetual improvements in the quality of consumption goods. The material resource constraint is not solely a long term issue since it is also shown to affect the whole transitory dynamics of the (material) growth process. Renewable energy is introduced in an extension of our basic model. This extension does not affect qualitatively the features of a feasible balanced growth path but make its conditions of existence more restrictive.

Keywords: material balance; endogenous growth; recycling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E1 O41 Q0 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40
Date: 2009-10-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-ene, nep-env, nep-fdg and nep-mac
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ctl:louvir:2009037

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