Search Results

“... Are our dealings with nature sustainable? Can we expect world economic growth to continue for the foreseeable future? Should we be confident that our knowledge and skills will increase in ways that will lessen our reliance on nature despite our growing numbers and rising economic activity? These questions have been debated for decades. If the debate has become increasingly shrill, it is because two opposing ways of looking at the world continue to shape it ...”

“... have a clear conception of what the balance should be between private and public support. This, in Partha Dasgupta’s opinion, is ‘the central problem of the social sciences’. In this inquiry, he suggests a way, at least for poorer societies, to solve it. His models, he says, shouldn’t be taken too literally. Although he is himself a theoretical ...”

“... the uncertainty, which can leave the thrust of their essays a little obscure: both Frank Hahn and Partha Dasgupta, for instance, argue that utilitarianism is compatible with respect for individual rights, Hahn because of the utility which people derive from the fulfilment of their rights and Dasgupta (more ...”

“... Pogge from the Kantian, Gerald Cohen, Brian Barry, the economists Amartya Sen, John Roemer and Partha Dasgupta, all get a nod in a footnote at most, and we hear nothing informative about how their arguments would be addressed. Major historical contributors such as Kant, Bentham and Adam Smith don’t even get a nod. So the implied reader is not a ...”

“... for it, our rate of time preference is positive: ‘impatience means δ > 0’ as the economist Partha Dasgupta puts it. The second term, ηg, is more complicated: η represents what economists call the ‘consumption elasticity of marginal utility’ and g is the annual rate of economic growth. The idea here is that the costs or benefits of our ...”