Overview

The purpose of this study is to better understand the essential interdependencies between the world economy and the global ecosystem, including human populations. World production, product prices, wages, interest rates, exchange rates, employment, and spending are shown to be mutually determined over time with the growth rates of country-specific renewable resources, the generation of waste, human population growth, waste assimilation by the basic fungible resource, and the sanitation and other health and human services provided by the government sectors. Particular attention is paid to alternative central bank policies and their potential effects upon future mixes of resources in world production and upon the level and composition of that production. Materials balance holds with respect to all production and consumption. Cash flow constraints hold with respect to all economic transactions; in particular, the decisions to save and invest are directly linked to financial market decisions.

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9781349539758

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Finally, an economics text that begins with 'The Global Ecosystem'. This book is an ambitious attempt to develop a truly integrated analysis of the economy, society, and the natural world.' - John M. Gowdy, Rittenhouse Professor of Humanities and Social Science, Department of Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA 'In a challenging and innovative study, Whitmore analyzes the interactions between the world's economic development and the functioning of our ecosystems, leading to insights that require a rewrite of most macroeconomic textbooks that tend to ignore these issues. This book challenges traditional macroeconomics by focusing on the vital relations between economics, natural resources and ecology.' - Ekko van Ierland, Professor of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, Wageningen University, The Netherlands 'Harland Whitmore combines the skills of an economic modeler with an awareness of market imperfections and environmental constraints. His global model provides a central role for natural resources and waste flows into the environment, as well as for disequilibrium, unemployment, imperfect information, and unintended savings or investment. He takes 'green accounting' seriously, and focuses on the importance of government policy for environmental protection, production and employment. This book goes beyond the limitations of most standard economic models to offer a new perspective on ecological macroeconomics.' - Jonathan Harris, Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University, USA

Author Information

HARLAND WM. WHITMORE, JR. is currently Professor of Economics at the University of Cincinnati, USA. He has published several books in open economy macroeconomics, including Aggregate Economic Choice (1986), World Economy Macroeconomics (1997) and Global Environmental Economics (1999). For the last several years, he has also consulted with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, working on the integration of the macroeconomy with an ecological system. One outcome of this effort was the publication of a report Integration of an Economy under Imperfect Competition with a Twelve-Cell Ecological Model (EPA/600/R-06/046, July 2006).

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