Deepening the Scope of the "Economic Model": Functionalities, Structures, Mechanisms, and Institutions. WWWforEurope Policy
Paper No. 24
WWWforEurope: Welfare, Wealth and Work for Europe, Juli 2015, 17 Seiten
Auftraggeber: Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien – Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft mbH – Österreichische Austauschdienst-GesmbH – Europäische Kommission, Rahmenprogramm
Studie von: Österreichisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung
By responding to the warning voices about the failure of mainstream economics to provide policy advice to seemingly well-known
problems as manifest in the ongoing economic crises, we put forward the proposition that the majority of deficiencies in this
discipline results from two self-imposed restrictions. The first restriction refers to the limited scope in the perception
of economic activities by focusing mainly on reproducible goods (including services) and very few resources, as human capital
and by production reproducible capital. The second restriction results from the interwoven relationships that describe economic
structures and the coordinating mechanisms which operate on these structures by postulating market relationships that quite
often turn out to be too simplistic or non-existing. We propose therefore two conceptual extensions. The first extension opens
up the scope of economic activity both by introducing the functionalities of well-being and an extended list of stocks and
flows of resources. The second extension separates the description of economic structures from the mechanisms that operate
on them, which may be market or non-market based. Furthermore we will demonstrate how these extensions can be made operational
in the context of analysing the transition of energy systems.
Forschungsbereich:Klima-, Umwelt- und Ressourcenökonomie