Dear all,
Please find below and in attachment a call for papers for a special
issue "Economics and the Environment since the 1950s: history,
methodology and philosophy". It will be published in 2020 by the French
journal 'Cahiers d'Economie politique/Papers in Political Economy".
Created in 1974, this journal publishes papers on history of economic
thought, economic philosophy, or papers overlapping fields of history of
economic thought and contemporary economic theory or economic history.
Papers are due by November 2019.
Please don't hesitate to ask me further information,
Best wishes,
Nathalie Berta
Associate professor of Economics, Reims University
Associate researcher CES, University of Paris 1
Economics and the Environment since the 1950s: History, Methodology, and
Philosophy
Call for papers for a special issue of the journal Cahiers d’économie
politique / Papers in political economy
Environmental concerns emerged in the field of economics during the
1950s. Some economists had focused on these issues before, but it was
not until then that the environment became an autonomous subject of
economic study. During this period of strong demographic and economic
growth in industrialized countries, this progressive recognition of
environmental issues by economists was caused by natural resources
depletion, ecosystems degradation, and pollution and its harmful
effects, such as the first smog in Los Angeles or the chemical
contamination of Minamata Bay.
This special issue is devoted to the contemporary history of
environmental economic thought, and to the transition from the marginal
specialization of a few pioneers to an established academic field. This
new field has however branched into separate theoretical approaches:
environmental economics, which partly grew out of the new welfare
economics and distinguished itself from the economics of natural
resources; and ecological economics which has been inspired by ecology
while trying to develop new analytical tools. This evolution thus raises
important issues from different perspectives: economic theory (e.g., the
concepts and analytical frameworks used), philosophy (e.g., the status
given to nature, the weight given to future generations) and policy
(e.g., the way new environmental policies finally prevail).
Contributions to the special issue could focus on the following issues:
- How has environmental economics emerged since the 1950s as a field
separate from natural resources economics? What has been the role of
American economists, whether they were specialized in this field (Ayres,
Kneese, D’Arge) or not (Galbraith)? How has ecological economics been
driven by both ecologists (Commoner, Odum) and economists (Fisher,
Dasgupta, Mäler, Boulding, Georgescu-Roegen, Daly)? How have Marxist,
post-Keynesian and institutional schools of economics addressed these
issues?
- From a methodological point of view, how have these new issues been
managed by existing theoretical frameworks? Environmental economics has
adapted the neoclassical framework and concepts, notably those borrowed
from the new welfare economics (market failure, externality, collective
good, cost-benefit analysis, natural capital) to new environmental
issues. By contrast, ecological economics has sought to find new
analytical approaches while being at the same time affected by the same
epistemological controversies that one can observe outside this field.
- From a policy point of view, how have these methodological
propositions and different policy recommendations been
institutionalized? When it was decided to design environmental policies,
what were the policy demands addressed to economists? Inversely, by what
means have recommendations by economists been treated by government or
agencies? What has been, for example, the influence of institutions like
Resources for the Future in the USA and the OECD, or different agencies
whose role has been to manage environmental issues at a national level?
- What have been the philosophical issues in terms of intra- or
intergenerational justice (for example concerning the choice of discount
rates), or in terms of the commodification of nature and more widely its
monetization (through the valuation of damages or more recently of
ecosystem services, or through allowance or permit markets)?
Papers, in French or English, that focus on these issues from a
historical perspective, from the 1950s onwards, are welcome. The special
issue will be published by the French journal Cahiers d’économie
politique / Papers in Political Economy (Hermann ed.) at the end of
2020.
Anonymous proposals (maximum 10,000 words) need to be sent to
[log in to unmask], with name, institution, abstract (maximum 700
words) and three keywords on a separate page.
Deadline for submission: November 1st, 2019.
Reply from the scientific committee by the beginning of February.
Publication at the end of 2020.
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