Biophysical economics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Biophysical economics is a system of economic thought based not on money but on laws of energy and material transformations and empirical assessments of these and their relation to money. The term 'biophysical economics' was coined by Alfred Lotka in 1924 in his call for the use of basic biological and physical principles to aid economic analysis. It is economics that starts with resource capacities, sustained production potential and human demography and from that examines the actuality and potential of a region for given economic activities, both in toto and per capita.
Unlike neoclassical economics, biophysical economics aims to chart out the territory of a world in which biophysical resources such as oil begin to act as fundamental limiters on economic activity.
[edit] See also and external links
- Ecological economics
- Systems ecology
- Environmental accounting
- Emergy synthesis
- Principles of energetics
- Olduvai theory
[edit] References
- Cleveland, Cutler J. 1999. Biophysical Economics - from Physiocracy to Ecological Economics and Industrial Ecology. In Bioeconomics and Sustainability: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Gerogescu-Roegen, J. Gowdy and K. Mayumi, Eds. (Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, England), pp. 125-154.
- Hall, C.A.S., C.J. Cleveland and R. Kaufmann. 1984. Energy and Resource Quality: The ecology of the economic process. Wiley Interscience, NY. 577 pp. (Second Edition. University Press of Colorado).
- Hall, C. A. S. (ed) 2000. Quantifying sustainable development: the future of tropical economies. Academic Press, San Diego.
- Hall, C.A,S, D. Lindenberger, R.Kummel, T. Kroeger and W. Eichhorn. 2001. 'The need to reintegrate the natural sciences with economics'. "BioScience", 51 (6) 663-673.
