Abstract:
A central issue in the study of sustainable development is the interplay of growth and sacrifice in a dynamic economy. This paper investigates the relationship among current consumption, growth, and sustained consumption in two canonical, stylized economies and in a more general context. If maximin value of utility measures what is sustainable and provides the limit to growth, increasing that value corresponds to sustainability improvement.There is a trade-off between current utility sacrifice (with respect to the sustainable level) and sustainability improvement.