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 Panthéon Sorbonne

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 papers (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.