Extraction path and sustainability

Abstract

This paper offers an approach to construct a family of extraction paths for nonrenewables that guarantee long-run sustainability of an imperfect economy. A path from this family leads to a monotonic growth of output with a decreasing rate of growth if a sustainability condition holds. Otherwise, the path leads either to a bounded decline or U-shaped path of output. In this sense, the paper extends neoclassical results and provides a bridge between neoclassical and degrowth theories because neoclassical tools are used to quantify degrowth scenarios. The offered path can be incentive-compatible for climate change problems because it reduces the extraction of polluting minerals consistently with the IPCC goals. That is, the climate-benefiting emission cuts by the parties of climate agreements may be guided by purely “egoistic” motives—to make own economies long-run sustainable.