Financing Sustainability Transitions
Paper Session
Friday, Jan. 3, 2025 2:30 PM - 4:30 PM (PST)
- Chair: Faruk Ülgen, University Grenoble Alpes
Towards a Radical Institutionalist Critique of Green Growth
Abstract
The belief system associated with neoclassical, or orthodox economics, can be understood as an enabling myth which supports an ongoing process of capital accumulation. Despite the heterodox approach taken by many proponents of sustainable development, the notion of green growth can similarly be described as an enabling myth, serving as justification for the continued expansion of capitalist markets. This inquiry seeks to establish that ideas selected from three institutional economists support a radical institutionalist critique of green growth. The good society of John Kenneth Galbraith shall situate this investigation within the history of economic thought and offer key concepts with which a contemporary critique may be built. William Dugger’s understanding of power, alongside his description of how enabling myth works to naturalize instituted process becomes structural support for a radical institutional critique. Expanding upon Elinor Ostrom’s notion of polycentric governance, this inquiry recognizes grassroots struggle and reasonable direct action as legitimate tactics in the transition to a sustainable and fairer world. Furthermore, this is a call for economists working within the tradition of evolutionary economics to seriously engage with the degrowth discourse prevalent within the field of ecological economics.Taming the Neoliberal Wild West: Imagining an Economically Democratic, Prosperous and Sustainable Future for Post-War Ukraine
Abstract
This paper strategizes how to forestall—and positively overturn—the devolution of Ukraine’s economy into a neoliberal “wild West” at the mercy of money manager capitalism and its primary agent of operation—transnational corporations. Ukraine, having suffered forced deindustrialization during the war, urgently needs to finance its capital accumulation. However, only the financial institutions of money manager capitalism offer funds for Ukraine’s post-war restructuring. This paper highlights two problematic current examples: first, BlackRock Corporation’s recent incursion into Ukrainian affairs, at President Zelenskyy’s invitation, signals a shocking surrender of domestic autonomy; BlackRock has, in principle, been contracted to coordinate all post-war national investment efforts. Second, Ukraine’s agriculture resources are suffering increasing erosion, as more than thirty percent of Ukraine’s farmland is now held by massive, export-motivated companies largely under foreign control, and whose commodity-driven profits do not benefit Ukrainians. The paper then provides a template for progressively reforming Ukraine’s economy. It includes a shift away from primarily external financing and towards a transitional model of constructivist state capitalism, under which the state, as a major controller of the economy’s productive wealth, will become a key provider of credit resources for the economy’s investment. The constructivist state will also enact policies that promote full employment, restructure large-scale productive property, support cooperative sustainable agriculture, maintain real wages, and nurture economy-wide participatory processes. The paper argues that only by constructing an economically democratic and fairer society can Ukraine “unwild” the “wild West” it has become and progressively reconstruct its post-war economy.From Market to Transition Economics: The Institutional Road to Ecological Economics
Abstract
Drawing upon the Institutionalist tradition, this article seeks to offer a few principles for a possible transition of capitalist market economies to sustainable ecological economies. The world-wide economic liberalization of the 1980s resulted in loosely regulated market-led and financialized economies. Public and private actors’ strategies became closely relying on short-sighted return-on-investment criterion, increasing the role of financial institutions and financial efficiency criteria in the functioning of economies. Therefore, economic, political and social decisions were related to financial efficiency criterion that was supported by the financial market efficiency hypothesis and then, by the public intervention inefficiency hypothesis. Through radical institutional changes, public regulation and collective action mechanisms were reduced to their (im)possible minimum level and governance of the economy was left to self-regulation rules. This private-interest-led regime relied on de-institutionalization of governance structures (regulation, supervision and incentivization of markets) and led to the 2007-08 financial crisis. The overall evolution of societies then took an unsustainable path regarding the environmental, ecological and social issues. Environmental and resources depletion and hysteresis of inequalities are some of the consequences of this episode. So, in the face of growing instabilities and insustainabilities, the necessary transition of the market economy to a viable society calls for an institutional revolution that would offer an alternative organization of economic and social dynamics in favor of collective action, apt to make private actors behavior consistent with societal coherence.JEL Classifications
- Q5 - Environmental Economics
- F0 - General