- Provides a new conceptual framework to understand the relationship between human economy and nature
- Combines ecological economics and complex systems theory
- Shows how elements of mainstream economics can be integrated into a generative economics of the future
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- About this book
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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.
- About the authors
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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.
- Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Introduction
Pages 1-18
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Biophysical Context of the Economy: Implications for Economics
Pages 21-51
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Simple Physical Model of Nature and Economy
Pages 53-89
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Subsystem Model of the Economy
Pages 91-125
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Rationale for an Economics of a Crowded Planet
Pages 127-152
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Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
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- Book Title
- Economics of a Crowded Planet
- Authors
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- Fraser Murison Smith
- Copyright
- 2019
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Copyright Holder
- The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
- eBook ISBN
- 978-3-030-31798-0
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-3-030-31798-0
- Hardcover ISBN
- 978-3-030-31797-3
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- XXIV, 428
- Number of Illustrations
- 64 b/w illustrations
- Topics