This book asks the question, how would economics look today and into the future if one started with a blank sheet of paper? Written mainly for a technical audience, yet accessible to the lay reader, Economics of a Crowded Planet addresses the ontology, epistemology and methodology of a future economics as if from outside the economy looking in. It presents a conceptual framework for a future economics drawing from systems science and hierarchy theory, integrating central concepts from present-day economics, so as to orient the field in a direction that can serve society’s future needs in practical ways.
The exposition reveals a paradigm called ‘market planetarianism’: the idea that the power of markets may be used to steer the economy toward a desired long-term goal. Both a prescriptive doctrine and an economic methodology, it treats the economy and nature as instances of complex, evolutionary systems, demanding analytical tools quite unlike those of the 20th-century mainstream.
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1 | (20) |
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Part I Coevolution of the Economy and Nature |
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2 Biophysical Context of the Economy: Implications for Economics |
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21 | (32) |
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3 Simple Physical Model of Nature and Economy |
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53 | (38) |
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4 Subsystem Model of the Economy |
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91 | (36) |
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5 Rationale for an Economics of a Crowded Planet |
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127 | (28) |
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Part II Where Is Economics Now? |
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6 Economic Orthodoxy and Emerging Pluralism |
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155 | (36) |
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7 The Economics of Nature |
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191 | (40) |
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8 Conventional Economics on a Crowded Planet |
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231 | (44) |
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Part III Where Does Economics Need to Be? |
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9 Framework for an Economics of a Crowded Planet |
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275 | (40) |
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10 Requirements for a Future Economics |
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315 | (40) |
| Appendix |
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355 | (58) |
| References |
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413 | (4) |
| Index |
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417 | |
Fraser Murison Smith is an energy specialist in public utilities, formerly an information systems consultant and award-winning cleantech entrepreneur. After completing a PhD in theoretical ecology at Oxford University, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in ecological economics. He has published papers on fisheries, biodiversity and economic development, as well as a book, Environmental Sustainability: Practical Global Implications (1997). Fraser and his wife, a healthcare technology leader, share their home in Northern California with two wonderful young children and a canoe and tent on standby for spontaneous forays into the surrounding mountains, rivers and lakes.
