21st Century Environmental Challenges: The Need For a New Economics

Abstract

Research on environmental economics and policy has been dominated by neoclassical theory. While there have been advances in this approach, including more sophisticated analysis of imperfect information and time, and the development of endogenous growth theory, neoclassical models contain a number of underlying characteristics that limit their relevance for modelling firm behaviour especially in relation to environmental issues, innovation and change. The limitations spring fundamentally from the underlying model of rational choice or business decision making, the treatment of innovation and the lack of any meaningful analysis of the institutional environment in which business and policy decisions are taken.