managing without growth abstract there are three main arguments why developed countries should consider managing without growth 1 continued economic growth worldwide is not an option owing to environmental and resource constraints and so developed countries should leave room for growth in developing countries where the benefits of growth are evident 2 in developed countries growth has become uneconomic in the sense that it detracts more from well being than it adds and 3 economic growth in developed countries is neither necessary nor sufficient for meeting specific policy objectives such as full employment no poverty and protection of the environment this paper explores various growth scenarios for canada over the medium range to 2020 using lowgrow a dynamic simulation model after describing lowgrow a scenario is presented that shows conditions under which the rate of unemployment in canada could be reduced to historically low levels poverty eliminated and greenhouse gas emissions reduced to comply with canada s commitment under the kyoto protocol without relying on economic growth this is not to say that zero growth should itself become a policy objective rather that the dependence on and defence of economic growth should not be an obstacle to fulfilling more specific welfare enhancing objectives of full employment eliminating poverty and protecting the environment the paper concludes with some policy implications for managing without growth followed by an annex which provides a technical description of lowgrow

testing for evidence of adverse selection in the automobile insurance market a comment in 1994 puelz and snow presented empirical evidence of adverse selection in the market for automobile collision insurance using data from a private insurer they claimed to have found strong evidence of adverse selection in the insurer s portfolio their test was based on individuals choice of deductible in each risk class from the models of rothschild and stiglitz 1976 and wilson 1977 it is well known that if residual adverse selection is present in some risk classes insurers will offer menus of contracts from which insureds will self select at equilibrium higher risk individuals will choose the smaller deductible and will be charged the higher price per unit of insurance dionne doherty and fombaron 2000 an empirical test of the theory is to verify in each risk class whether lower deductibles are chosen by insureds with higher accident proba

the evolution of high incomes in northern america lessons from canadian evidence this paper uses tax statistics to construct new series on canadian top income shares from 1920 to 2000 and provides a systematic comparison with the u s experience as in the united states top income shares in canada display a ushaped pattern over the century with a precipitous drop during world war ii followed by a slower decline until 1970 since the late 1970s top income shares have been increasing dramatically and the very top shares are now as high as in the pre war era as in the united states the recent increase in top income shares is the consequence of a surge in top wages and salaries the canadian experience since the late 1970s does not appear to be well explained by tax changes suggesting that the upward trend in canada derives from the united states perhaps because many high income canadians have an emigration option this in turn suggests that the recent increase in u s personal income top shares is not merely a change in tax reporting behavior the recent sharp increase in top income shares in canada is of the same magnitude at the individual and family level and is not due to an increase in income mobility

gender differences in rent sharing and its implications for the gender wage gap evidence from sweden abstract this study using matched employer employee data analyses gender differences in rent sharing results indicate significantly smaller remuneration from firm profits for women a difference that increases along the wage distribution gender differences in rent sharing explain less than 2 of mean gender wage differentials as differences are found in remuneration from firm profit and not in the mean profit levels of employing firms

ecological macroeconomic models assessing current developments our society faces a dilemma while continued economic growth is ecologically unsustainable low or negative rates of economic growth are accompanied by adverse social impacts hence there is a need for macroeconomic tools that can help identify socially sustainable post growth pathways the emerging field of ecological macroeconomics aims to address this need and features a number of new macroeconomic modelling approaches this article provides 1 a review of modelling developments in ecological macroeconomics based on the literature and interviews with researchers and 2 an analysis of how the different models incorporate policy themes from the post growth literature twenty two ecological macroeconomic models were analysed and compared to eight policy themes it was found that environmental interactions and the monetary system were treated most comprehensively themes of income inequality work patterns indicators of well being and disaggregated production were addressed with less detail while alternative business models and cross scale interactions were hardly addressed overall the combination of input output analysis with stock flow consistent modelling was identified as a promising avenue for developing macroeconomic models for a post growth economy however due to the wide interpretation of what the economy entails future research will benefit from employing a range of approaches

the threat of rent extraction in a resource constrained future abstract ecological economists aim to transform our economic institutions so that society can flourish within planetary boundaries the central message of this article is that private rent extraction forms a key barrier to the realisation of that goal i define rent as an economic reward which is sustained through control of assets that cannot be quickly and widely replicated and which exceeds proportionate compensation for the labour of the recipient i argue that unless we close opportunities for rent extraction and socialise unavoidable rents our governments will be compelled to pursue output growth regardless of its environmental consequences in order to prevent spiralling inequality and unemployment the positive proposition in this article is that the concept of rent can help us to identify and build democratic support for the institutional transformations necessary to prepare for a resource constrained future measures to reduce and redistribute rentier power could be emancipatory for the poorest in society whilst making more feasible many proposals that have been advocated already in this journal including reduced working hours and resource caps by contrast if environmental protections are introduced before opportunities for private rent extraction are closed we could see intensified rent seeking asset price bubbles poverty and economic insecurity

economic growth inequality and well being in advanced industrial societies rising levels of inequality have contributed strongly to the observed gap that has emerged between per capita income and the index of sustainable economic welfare isew which in its current versions is known as the genuine progress indicator gpi yet the isew gpi approach to measuring the social costs of inequality has been criticized as ad hoc the present paper reviews the literature on this topic and efforts to resolve it based on the construction of indicators grounded in a a classical utilitarian ethical framework and b empirical evidence on the relationship between income and well being in the united states after tax income per capita grew at an annual rate of 1 7 between 1979 and 2011 a growth rate of 1 2 per year arises when income is adjusted to account for the social costs of inequality the most common adjustment used in isew gpi studies yields a similar growth rate despite much smaller subtractions from baseline income

are positional concerns stronger in some domains than in others for more than one hundred years economists have discussed the concept of positional goods that the utility conferred by many perhaps even most goods depends not only on the amount the individual consumes but also on the amount others consume e g thorstein veblen 1899 james duesenberry 1949 john k galbraith 1958 robert frank 1985 while economic interest in positional goods is increasing e g mark pingle and mike mitchell 2002 kenneth arrow et al 2004 ed hopkins and tatiana kornienko 2004 the literature remains largely theoretical rather than empirical if status concerns affect all items in the utility function equally leisure as well as goods the positional effect would operate like a lump sum tax reducing well being without changing the allocation of time or money arrow et al 2004 however if positional concerns are stronger for some things than for others then in order to understand how people can become better off in well being not simply in wealth we must investigate how interpersonal competition interacts with material gains frank 1997 evidence about what goods are more positional than others is essential for correct policy recommendations gregory besharov 2002 but little is actually known about the relative positional rankings of items in the typical consumer s utility function four hypotheses proposed in the literature are

viewpoint sustainability malthus revisited the sustainability debate concerns whether the world will experience stable or improving living standards for the foreseeable future or whether the current trajectory will overtax the natural environment leading to a crash in living standards this paper selec tively reviews relevant research focusing on both ecological concerns and technological progress and asks whether sustainability would be problematic without rapid population growth i suggest that continued demographic transition to lower fertility is the primary requirement for achieving sustainable development this is effectively a modern transla tion of malthus 1798 the paper also discusses the role of the malthusian cycle in human evolution jel classification q56 j10

oil scarcity what have the past three decades revealed oil shortages have been predicted over the past 30 years in fact oil is more plentiful now in an economic sense than in 1973 the reason for such misconceptions lies mainly in reliance on analytical techniques that do not comprehend oil as an economic commodity

economic indicators of resource scarcity a critical essay abstract the theoretical arguments of the conceptual and empirical literature on economic indicators of long run resource scarcity are logically flawed if resource allocators were informed of the nature of resource scarcity their behavior and the economic indicators it generates would reflect the scarcity but if they were so informed we could simply ask them if resources were scarce if they are not informed their behavior and economic indicators are as likely to indicate their ignorance as the reality unfortunately there is no way of knowing whether they are informed or not unless we already know whether resources are scarce

indicators of sustainable development some lessons from capital theory abstract interest in sustainable development has prompted a search for suitable indicators that might complement or supplant the traditional measures of economic success although there is no agreement about the precise meaning of sustainable development one idea which is increasingly in good currency is that sustainable development requires that the stock of capital that one generation passes on to the next be maintained or enhanced further this stock of capital is seen by some to comprise two elements manufactured capital and natural capital the extent to which these are believed to be substitutes or complements is one factor which separates the neoclassical school from some of its critics a premise of this paper is that if capital theory is relevant to sustainable development then it should also be helpful in developing indicators however even within the normal confines of economics capital theory is not a homogeneous body of analysis therefore an exploration of capital theory and its relevance to sustainable development can be expected to generate various perspectives on those measures most useful for gauging the sustainability of economic activity it is these linkages between capital theory in various schools of thought and possible indicators of sustainable development that are the subject of this paper

community renewable energy at a crossroads a think piece on degrowth technology and the democratization of the german energy system abstract degrowth activists and scholars have questioned society s current levels of material throughput and energy use the energy sector is at the core of any modern economy and germany serves as an international showcase for the transition of a large industrialized economy to a low carbon energy system diverse actors organizational models and technologies have contributed to the initiation of germany s energy transition through a wide range of community renewable energy projects the think piece investigates how far these diverse actors embrace the aims of the degrowth movement it also provides a critical account of on the ground realities through six hypotheses and contrasts them with claims made by the degrowth movement it is suggested that community renewable energy projects are at a crossroads while many projects have familiarized thousands of people with alternative economic models there is little evidence of a general change in attitudes towards technology consumption or equity in conclusion a major effort is needed to open initiatives to less affluent actors oppose recent trends of commodification and prevent community renewable energy projects from being engrossed by the dominant political and economic system

potential consequences on the economy of low or no growth short and long term perspectives potential consequences on the economy of low or no growth short and long term perspectives

do mature economies grow exponentially abstract in academic discussions and in public debate economic growth is commonly presumed to be exponential economic theories model growth in an exponential manner and central policy institutions regard growth rates of 2 3 to be normal also implying growth to be exponential in this paper we investigate empirically whether economic growth is indeed exponential by estimating autoregressive integrated moving average time series models based on gross domestic product data for 18 mature economies from 1960 to 2013 our findings cast doubts on whether these commonly discussed economic growth paths reflect the economic reality only two out of 18 mature countries depict exponential growth rates above these levels five have lower exponential growth and the development of eleven countries exhibit rather linear growth additionally we show that prominent theories of economic growth assume growth to be exponential and that a more heterogeneous set of theories is needed to explain different patterns of growth across time and space

macroeconomic modelling under energy constraints global low carbon transition scenarios abstract integrated assessment models provide a framework to study sustainability transitions and their economic impacts models seldom consider energy constraints taking supply availability for granted and thus suggesting a mere change in the energy mix from non renewables to renewables in order to address these limitations a macro economic module within a broader system dynamics model medeas has been developed the model has been run for the whole world from 1995 to 2050 under three different scenarios business as usual bau considering no further transition policies and keeping current trends green growth gg undertaking the low carbon transition according to the paris agreement set of policies and with high gdp growth standards and post growth pg testing the sustainability transition under a gdp non growth degrowth approach the results reveal the conflict between economic growth climate policy and the sustainability of resources whereas a bau approach would not even be an option to achieve climate goals a gg view would not only face the downsizing of economic output but neither would it be able to achieve the 2 c objective the success of the pg approach in meeting emissions objectives suggests a redirection from economic growth policies to an industrial policy that incorporates efficiency and redistribution

after kyoto alternative mechanisms to control global warming after more than a decade of negotiations and planning under the framework convention on climate change fccc the first binding international agreement to control the emissions of greenhouse gases has come into effect in the kyoto protocol the first budget period of 2008 2012 is at hand moreover the scientific evidence on greenhouse warming strengthens steadily as observational evidence of warming accumulates the institutional framework of the protocol has taken hold solidly in the european union s emissions trading scheme ets which covers almost half of europe s carbon dioxide emissions notwithstanding this apparent success the kyoto protocol is widely seen as somewhere between troubled and terminal early troubles came with the failure to include the major developing countries along with lack of an agreedupon mechanism to include new countries and extend the agreement to new periods the major blow came when the united states withdrew from the treaty in 2001 by 2002 the protocol covered only 30 percent of global emissions while the hard enforcement mechanism in the ets accounts for about 8 percent of global emissions even if the current protocol is extended models indicate that it will have little impact on global temperature change unless there is a dramatic breakthrough or a new design the protocol threatens to be seen as a monument to institutional overreach nations are now beginning to consider the structure of climate change policies for the period after 2008 to 2012 some countries states cities companies and even universities are adopting their own climate change policies are there in fact alternatives to the scheme of tradable emissions permits embodied in the protocol the fact is that alternative approaches have not had a serious hearing among natural scientists or among policymakers what are some alternatives for global public goods there are three potential approaches command and control regulation quantity oriented market approaches and taxor price based regimes of these only the tradable quantity and the price like regimes have any hope of being reasonably efficient under a tradable quantity approach an agreement proceeds by setting limits on emissions by different countries the limits are partially or wholly transferable among countries this is the approach taken under the kyoto protocol this approach has very limited international experience under existing protocols such as the cfc chlorofluorocarbon mechanisms and somewhat broader experience under national trading regimes such as the u s sulfur dioxide regime a radically different approach is to use harmonized prices fees or taxes as a method of coordinating policies among countries this approach has no international experience in the environmental area although it has modest experience nationally in such areas as the u s tax on ozone depleting chemicals on the other hand the use of harmonized price type measures has extensive international experience in fiscal and trade policies such as with the harmonization of taxes in the european union and harmonized tariffs in international trade these thoughts on the structure of international agreements to control global warming should not be regarded as negotiating strategies

a stock flow fund ecological macroeconomic model this paper develops a stock flow fund ecological macroeconomic model that combines the stock flow consistent approach of godley and lavoie with the flow fund model of georgescu roegen the model has the following key features first monetary and physical stocks and flows are explicitly formalised taking into account the accounting principles and the laws of thermodynamics second georgescu roegen s distinction between stock flow and fund service resources is adopted third output is demand determined but supply constraints might arise either due to environmental damages or due to the exhaustion of natural resources fourth climate change influences directly the components of aggregate demand fifth finance affects macroeconomic activity and the materialisation of investment plans that determine ecological efficiency the model is calibrated using global data simulations are conducted to investigate the trajectories of key environmental macroeconomic and financial variables under i different assumptions about the sensitivity of economic activity to the leverage ratio of firms and ii different types of green finance policies

can degrowth overcome the leakage problem of unilateral climate policy abstract unilateral climate policy suffers from carbon leakage i e the partial offset of the initial emission reduction by increases in other countries different than most typically discussed climate policies degrowth not only aims at reducing the fossil fuel use in an economy but rather besides other social and political goals at a reduction of all factor inputs which may lead to different leakage implications we conduct the first investigation of degrowth in a multi country setting in order to i compare the leakage effects of national pure emission reduction policies to degrowth scenarios ii identify underlying channels by decomposing the implied emission changes into scale composition and technique effects and iii investigate which country characteristics determine degrowth s relative effectiveness to overcome the leakage problem using a structural gravity model we find that degrowth indeed significantly reduces leakage by keeping the sectoral composition of the country more stable and reducing uncommitted countries incentives to shift towards more energy intensive production techniques the higher effectiveness of degrowth in reducing carbon emissions is most pronounced for small and trade open economies with comparatively clean production technologies

mainstream economics toolkit within the ecological economics framework abstract development of ecological economics was a response to the environmental crisis born by the economic growth ecological economics in contrast to mainstream economics is characterized by value pluralism and interdisciplinary approach that makes it hard to achieve methodological unanimity this paper considers if the mainstream methods could be used to tackle environment problems effectively to this purpose the integrated macro model is proposed it suggests that all environment externalities could be accounted in the existing production consumption system so using the new ideology based on ecological economics priorities and applying the toolkit of mainstream economics we could transform the existing pricing system and provide effective institutional reforms to ensure sustainable development

growing green money mapping community currencies for sustainable development abstract parallel sustainable monetary systems are being developed by civil society groups and non governmental organisations ngos informed by ecological economics perspectives on development value economic scale and growth and responding to the unsustainability of current global financial systems these parallel systems of exchange or community currencies are designed to promote sustainable development by localising economic development building social capital and substituting for material consumption valuing work which is marginalised in conventional labour markets and challenging the growth based monetary system however this international movement towards community based ecological economic practices is under researched this paper presents new empirical evidence from the first international study of the scope and character of community currencies it identifies the diversity scale geography and development trajectory of these initiatives discusses the implications of these findings for efforts to achieve sustainable development and identifies future research needs to help harness the sustainability potential of these initiatives

the bare necessities how much household carbon do we really need the consumption patterns of western nations are generally deemed to be unsustainable yet there is little attempt to restrain either material throughput or income growth nonetheless in the face of the need to make deep cuts in carbon emissions for instance consumption restraint may be a perfectly legitimate response this paper explores the potential for a reduced consumption scenario in the uk constructed by assuming that households achieve a specific minimum income standard which is deemed to provide a decent life for each household type the minimum income standards are taken from a recent study for the joseph rowntree foundation and include not only subsistence commodities such as food warmth and shelter but also the means to participate effectively in society the joseph rowntree foundation study produced detailed household expenditure budgets for these income standards the paper uses an environmentally extended quasi multi regional input output model to estimate the greenhouse gas ghg emissions required in the production and distribution of all goods and services purchased according to these budgets our results show that average household ghg emissions in the uk would be around 37 lower in the reduced consumption scenario than they are currently we explore several implications of these findings including the need to change social norms around consumption the need for investment to improve the thermal performance of homes and the need to develop new transport infrastructures we also address the potential to reduce emissions below the level achieved in this scenario and discuss the implications for policy

the physical economy of the european union cross country comparison and determinants of material consumption abstract in this paper we investigate what determines observed differences in economy wide material use among the eu 15 member states the empirical basis for our analysis is an extended and revised material flow data set for each of the eu 15 countries in time series from 1970 to 2001 this data set comprises consistent data for domestic extraction imports and exports as well as for derived material flow indicators broken down by 12 types of materials we compare the level and composition of domestic material consumption dmc in the eu 15 member states and identify determinants of the observed differences across the european union member states overall dmc per capita varies by a factor of three ranging between 12 tonnes per capita in italy and the united kingdom and 37 tonnes per capita in finland this variability of dmc in the eu 15 is in a similar order of magnitude as the variability of gdp per capita or total primary energy supply per capita linear correlation analysis reveals that national income and final energy consumption relate to material use but cannot fully account for the observed differences in material consumption by breaking down overall material flow indicators into 12 categories of materials and analysing their use patterns in detail we identified a number of factors socio economic and natural that influence the level and composition of economy wide material use many of these factors are specific for certain types of materials others are more general and quite some driving factors counteract each other regarding the direction of their influence concluding we summarize the most important driving factors for domestic material consumption stressing population density as largely neglected but important explanatory variable for material use patterns discuss issues of environmental significance aggregation and the use of different denominators in material flow accounting and suggest a re interpretation of dmc

confusion en la tasa de descuento una perspectiva desde la economia ecologica factors impacting on the discounting process are mirrored in every aspect of human activities be it the philosophical the aesthetic the religious through to the environmental and scientific experiences in short discounting is a controversial concept and yet the economic profession seems to ignore that issues related to long term discounting are complex multifaceted and far from settled the environmental community in particular has expressed reservations about discounting because this process an inherently myopic one embodies a built in bias against the future generations it will be argued here that the danger to ecological sustainability is of a specific nature namely it relates to the lack of substitutability between human made capital and natural capital if this assumption is accepted then it follows that using a discount rate is an inadequate instrumentfor achieving sustainability thus it will be argued that the implementation of the precautionary principle e g in form of safe minimum standards of ecosystem protection provides a successful approach for achieving sustainability

macroeconomic narratives in a world of crises an analysis of stories about solving the system crisis since the financial crisis in 2008 a series of publications on macroeconomic responses to the compound crises of the economy and the environment have emerged under labels such as green new deal green growth and the great transition attempts at offering coherent responses to the crises have been made these responses have in common that they all present a large number of policy proposals for ways in which to solve the current crises and achieve a sustainable economy this article provides a mapping of a selection of such responses and an analysis of their content the analysis combines discourse theory and narrative analysis and investigates discourses by studying the narratives they produce the study thus contributes to the long line of analyses on discourses on sustainable economy empirically by investigating and analysing a number of macroeconomic proposals for solving the system crisis and theoretically by elaborating on the concept of narrative dynamics in relation to persuasive strength in political decision making

the consumption of a finite planet well being convergence divergence and the nascent green economy a variety of global metrics indicate the earth has overshot its capacity to supply source and sink resources without substantial negative feedback here the relationship between consumption indicators oil freshwater vehicle and meat consumption gdp mathrm co 2 emissions and well being is analysed latitudinally across 189 countries and longitudinally over 60 years within three affluent countries all latitudinal analyses show the characteristic consumption cliff and affluent uplands shape e g at low per capita gdp life satisfaction increases sharply up the cliff with rising gdp after a threshold well being is independent of gdp across the affluent uplands longitudinal analyses of japan uk and usa since the 1950s show per capita gdp has grown between 3 and 8 fold but mean levels of well being remained unchanged consumption patterns are now converging on those typical in affluent countries indicators for seven baskets of countries affluent north america europe oceania affluent asia fast developing brics and civets high income resource extractors poor with green peaks and the poorest show the factors of consumption between the poorest and affluent 5 to 100 fold and the fast developing and affluent 2 to 10 fold a finite planet cannot resource such convergence one indicator climate change grows more of a concern as evidence emerges yet denial remains strong a priority is to create opportunities for divergent ways of living although material culture has been sought as the means to meet personal well being it has failed both the affluent and poorest a green economy will require human attachments to both place and possessions thus reducing disposal and damage such entanglement produces high affiliation that improves life satisfaction as does much non material consumption as yet most political and economic systems are far from recognising these imperatives though there have been notable policy innovations a shift to a green economy is inevitable it is simply whether it occurs before or after the world becomes locked into severe climate change and other consequences of harm to natural capital

ecological macroeconomics an application to climate change ecological economics has not paid sufficient attention to the macroeconomic level both in terms of theory and modeling yet key topics debated in the field of ecological economics such as sustainable consumption reduction in working time the degrowth debate the energy exergy link and the rebound effect require a holistic and macro perspective while this deficiency has been identified before and keynesian economics has been generally suggested as a potent vehicle to establish economic system s thinking very little concrete theorizing and practical suggestions have been put forward we give further credence to this suggestion and demonstrate the value of tackling key concerns of ecological economics within a keynesian growth framework contextualized by an application to climate change we suggest that policy relevant recommendations need to be based on a consistent view of the macroeconomy we end with laying out key building blocks for a keynesian model framework for an ecological macroeconomics authors abstract

ecological monetary economics a post keynesian critique the monetary analysis of some ecological economists currently appears to be mostly articulated around the following core a stationary economy and a fortiori a degrowth economy is incompatible with a system in which money is created as interest bearing debt to question the relevance of the debt money positive interest rate output growth nexus this paper adopts a critical stance towards the currently emerging ecological monetary economics from the standpoint of another strand of heterodox economics the post keynesian approach in its current state ecological monetary economics is at odds with post keynesian economics in its analysis of the money growth relationship this will be shown using the theory of endogenous money and a simple cambridgian kaleckian model where debt money and a positive interest rate are compatible with a full stationary economy

the kenneth e boulding memorial award 2014 ecological economics a personal journey abstract this speech was delivered at the meeting of the international society for ecological economics at reykjiavik iceland on the 13th of august 2014 at the presentation of the 2014 kenneth e boulding memorial award in the speech peter victor pays tribute to kenneth boulding one of the pioneers of ecological economics and then describes his own principal contributions to ecological economics over a period of 45 years these contributions include environmental applications of input output analysis the problematic extension of the concept of capital to nature the definition and analysis of green growth and his research on ecological macroeconomics and the challenge to economic growth

growth degrowth and climate change a scenario analysis article i nfo article history the paper proceeds with a discussion of the interplay of scale and intensity in determining greenhouse gas emissions this is followed by the presentation of several macroeconomic scenarios using lowgrow a simulation model of the canadian economy the scenarios considered are business as usual which is a projection into the future of past trends selective growth in which differential growth rates are applied to parts of the economy according to their direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions and degrowth where the average gdp capita of canadians is reduced towards a level more consistent with a world economy the size of which respects global environmental limits the paper ends with a comparison of the scenarios 2011 published by elsevier b v

status effects and negative utility growth this paper explains the observed stagnation of happiness measures through a growth model in which agents care about conspicuous consumption normal goods confer direct utility while status goods confer utility only at the expense of others firms can improve the quality of both goods through r d the nash equilibrium of the consumer game results in the share of expenditure on status goods increasing with the number of times the status good has been improved as the economy grows resources for innovation are transferred entirely to status good r d the resulting long run rate of utility growth is negative

the transition to a sustainable prosperity a stock flow consistent ecological macroeconomic model for canada abstract this paper presents a stock flow consistent sfc macroeconomic simulation model for canada we use the model to generate three very different stories about the future of the canadian economy covering the half century from 2017 to 2067 a base case scenario in which current trends and relationships are projected into the future a carbon reduction scenario in which measures are introduced specifically designed to reduce canada s carbon emissions and a sustainable prosperity scenario which incorporates additional measures to improve environmental social and financial conditions across society the performance of the economy is tracked using two composite indicators constructed especially for this study an environmental burden index ebi which describes the environmental performance of the model and a composite sustainable prosperity index spi which is based on a weighted average of seven economic social and environmental performance indicators contrary to the widely accepted view the results suggest that green growth in the carbon reduction scenario may be slower than brown growth more importantly we show in the sustainable prosperity scenario that improved environmental and social outcomes are possible even as the growth rate declines to zero