John M Gowdy
Biographic Data
| ID | 729048 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John M Gowdy |
| GIVEN NAMES | John M |
| FAMILY NAME | Gowdy |
| SIGNATURE | GOWDY J M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6056-8760 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 101 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 49 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Dialectics and evolutionary materialism: Expanding methodological pluralism in ecological economics
Ecological economics is concerned with understanding the relationship of humanity's household to earth's household. Its orientation has been to nurture methodological pluralism. This expansive project has yet to include in its toolbox what we label–dialectics and evolutionary materialism. This approach and methodology for understanding complex economic systems (the foundation of humanity's household); their emergence, structure, dynamic, and the …
Ultrasocial: The Evolution of Human Nature and the Quest for a Sustainable Future
Ultrasocial argues that rather than environmental destruction and extreme inequality being due to human nature, they are the result of the adoption of agriculture by our ancestors. Human economy has become an ultrasocial superorganism (similar to an ant or termite colony), with the requirements of superorganism taking precedence over the individuals within it. Human society is now an autonomous, highly integrated network of technologies, institut…
Our hunter-gatherer future: Climate change, agriculture and uncivilization
For most of human history, about 300,000 years, we lived as hunter gatherers in sustainable, egalitarian communities of a few dozen people. Human life on Earth, and our place within the planet’s biophysical systems, changed dramatically with the Holocene, a geological epoch that began about 12,000 years ago. An unprecedented combination of climate stability and warm temperatures made possible a greater dependence on wild grains in several parts o…
A multilevel evolutionary framework for sustainability analysis
Waring, T. M., M. A. Kline, J. S. Brooks, S. H. Goff, J. Gowdy, M. A. Janssen, P. E. Smaldino, and J. Jacquet. 2015. A multilevel evolutionary framework for sustainability analysis. Ecology and Society 20(2): 34. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-07634-200234
Limited Wants, Unlimited Means: A Reader On Hunter-Gatherer Economics And The Environment
Payments for ecosystem services and the fatal attraction of win‐win solutions
In this commentary we critically discuss the suitability of payments for ecosystem services and the most important challenges they face. While such instruments can play a role in improving environmental governance, we argue that over‐reliance on payments as win‐win solutions might lead to ineffective outcomes, similar to earlier experience with integrated conservation and development projects. Our objective is to raise awareness, particularly amo…
The ultrasocial origin of the Anthropocene
Monetary valuation of ecosystem services: It matters to get the timeline right
The economics of ecosystem services: From local analysis to national policies
The Parable of the Bees: Beyond Proximate Causes in Ecosystem Service Valuation
41 Many ecological and environmental economists take a microeconomic approach to environmental valuation and view the macroeconomy as an amalgam of firms whose primary task is to efficiently allocate scarce resources. In this framework, replacing freely provided ecosystem services with costly human-provided substitutes is by definition inefficient. Although destroying and replacing the free gifts of nature can sometimes be an economic benefit, in…
The evolution of social and moral behavior: Evolutionary insights for public policy
Behavioral economics and climate change policy
Avoiding self-organized extinction: Toward a co-evolutionary economics of sustainability
The critical problems that scientists warned about decades ago are now upon us. There is a near universal consensus that global warming is human-caused and that its effects are now accelerating. Biodiversity loss and ecosystem disruption is now well-documented. The global connections between social disruption, resource use and environmental degradation are now all too familiar. This information is all the more disturbing in view of the well-docum…
Environmental degradation and happiness
Toward an experimental foundation for benefit-cost analysis
Sustainability and benefit–cost analysis: Theoretical assessments and policy options
The Origins of Ecological Economics: The Bioeconomics of Nicholas Georgescu‐Roegen. By Kozo Mayumi
The approach of ecological economics
This paper discusses the major tenets of ecological economics—including value pluralism, methodological pluralism and multi-criteria policy assessment. Ecological economics offers viable alternatives to the theoretical foundations and policy recommendations of neoclassical welfare economics. A revolution in neoclassical economics is currently taking place, and the core assumptions of welfare economics are being replaced with more realistic models…
Toward a new welfare economics for sustainability
Ecological economics at a crossroads
Sustainability and collapse: What can economics bring to the debate
Greenhouse Economics: Value and Ethics
Reformulating the foundations of consumer choice theory and environmental valuation
Strong versus Weak Sustainability: Economics, Natural Sciences, and Consilience
Paradise for Sale: A Parable of Nature
Behavioral economics and climate change policy
Our hunter-gatherer future: Climate change, agriculture and uncivilization
For most of human history, about 300,000 years, we lived as hunter gatherers in sustainable, egalitarian communities of a few dozen people. Human life on Earth, and our place within the planet’s biophysical systems, changed dramatically with the Holocene, a geological epoch that began about 12,000 years ago. An unprecedented combination of climate stability and warm temperatures made possible a greater dependence on wild grains in several parts o…
Resource Use, Institutions, and Sustainability: A Tale of Two Pacific Island Cultures
This paper examines two Pacific Island cultures, Easter Island and Tikopia, and the relationship between natural resource systems, human-made capital, population growth, and institutional change. Easter Island followed a preindustrial society pattern of overshoot-and collapse. However, Tikopia evolved cultural practices leading to zero-population growth and sustainable resource use. Using a modified Lotka- Volterra, predator-prey model, we find (…
A multilevel evolutionary framework for sustainability analysis
Waring, T. M., M. A. Kline, J. S. Brooks, S. H. Goff, J. Gowdy, M. A. Janssen, P. E. Smaldino, and J. Jacquet. 2015. A multilevel evolutionary framework for sustainability analysis. Ecology and Society 20(2): 34. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-07634-200234
The economics of ecosystem services: From local analysis to national policies
Strong versus Weak Sustainability: Economics, Natural Sciences, and Consilience
The Evolution of Georgescu-Roegen's Bioeconomics
Georgescu-Roegen's work is usually divided into two categories, his earlier work on consumer and production theory and his later concern with entropy and bioeconomics beginning with his 1966 introductory essay to his collected theoretical papers published in the volume Analytical Economics. Most economists usually praise his earlier work on pure theory and ignore his later work which is highly critical of neoclassical economics. Those economists …
Progress and Environmental Sustainability
Technological and Demand Change in Energy Use: An Input—Output Analysis
In this study input–output tables for the US economy are used to examine the changing pattern of energy use from 1963 to 1977. A method is developed for isolating some of the reasons behind the observed changes. We examine the impact of four types of technological change and two types of demand change on energy use. Two types of technological change that are of particular importance in the time period considered are changes in energy mix and chan…
Radical Economics and Resource Scarcity
(1981). Radical Economics and Resource Scarcity. Review of Social Economy: Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 165-180
Sustainability and collapse: What can economics bring to the debate
Unlimited Means: Reader on Hunter-Gatherer Economics and the Environment
Trade and Environmental Sustainability: An Evolutionary Perspective
Economies entirely dependent upon local environmental resources should have a greater incentive to preserve those resources than economies based on specialization and trade. Evidence from history and prehistory, however, shows that many regionally based economies have collapsed because of environmental overexploitation. Evidence from the past shows that there is a strong connection between environmental degradation, power, and social instability.…
Further Problems with Neoclassical Environmental Economics
Economic and biological aspects of genetic diversity
This article examines some of the characteristics of biological diversity and the appropriateness of the standard economic model in developing policies to protect genetic resources. It is argued that the assumptions of the standard model of perfect competition, including perfect information, reversibility, the emphasis on marginal analysis, and the appropriateness of discounting the future, place severe limitations on the usefulness of this appro…
Bioeconomics: A Comment
Radical Economics and Resource Scarcity
(1981). Radical Economics and Resource Scarcity. Review of Social Economy: Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 165-180
The Economics of Entropy: Reply to Stehle
I welcome the opportunity to respond to Mr. Stehle's comments. His remarks illustrate quite nicely the methodological blinders of neoclassi? cal theory as well as the intellectual arrogance of its adherents. In support of his argument that private institutions are less suscepti? ble to mismanagement than public ones, Stehle cites several empirical studies. [Crain and Zardkoohi, pp. 395-408; Davies, pp. 149-65] In fact, these studies are compariso…
Toward A Sustainable Radical Economy: Reply To Stanfield
"Toward A Sustainable Radical Economy: Reply To Stanfield." Review of Social Economy, 41(1), pp. 72–73 *0034-6764/83/0401-72/$1.50/0/. Notes *0034-6764/83/0401-72/$1.50/0
Evolutionary Theory and Economic Theory: Some Methodological Issues
Economic theory and evolutionary theory in biology have much in common both in terms of their origins and in terms of the nature and complexity of their subject matter. It is well-known that Charles Darwin refined his idea of natural selection after a reading of British political economists, particularly Thomas Malthus. [Schweber, pp. 229 316] One of the founders of modern economics, Alfred Marshall, con? tended that biology, not mechanics, is th…
Technological and Demand Change in Energy Use: An Input—Output Analysis
In this study input–output tables for the US economy are used to examine the changing pattern of energy use from 1963 to 1977. A method is developed for isolating some of the reasons behind the observed changes. We examine the impact of four types of technological change and two types of demand change on energy use. Two types of technological change that are of particular importance in the time period considered are changes in energy mix and chan…
Inner, Final, and Feedback Structures in an Extended Input-Output System
In this paper, the input-output model is treated as a complete matrix system of interindustry transactions related to primary inputs and final demand. Such an integration permits the total coefficient matrices to be related to the starting and ending points of the input-output system. It is shown how this formulation may be used for policy analysis by isolating the effects of changes in any one of the areas on any other area, including the feedba…
Bioeconomics and post Keynesian economics: A search for common ground
Land use regulation in the Lake George basin: An ecological economic perspective
The Bioethics of Hunting and Gathering Societies
Economic and biological aspects of genetic diversity
This article examines some of the characteristics of biological diversity and the appropriateness of the standard economic model in developing policies to protect genetic resources. It is argued that the assumptions of the standard model of perfect competition, including perfect information, reversibility, the emphasis on marginal analysis, and the appropriateness of discounting the future, place severe limitations on the usefulness of this appro…
Economic selection and the role of government: Some lessons from evolutionary biology
The economic system is not divinely ordained. It is the product of human beings and can therefore be questioned and altered if necessary. The Reagan and Bush administrations elevated the status of those extreme right economists who wish to preserve privilege by claiming the divine right of market outcomes. It is the argument of this paper that this divine right has its roots in a Victorian view of natural selection. It is instructive to recognize…
Natural capital and the growth economy
It is argued that the term ‘natural capital’ contains two contradictory ideas. The word ‘natural’ refers to a world governed by ecological relationships while ‘capital’ refers to a world governed by the laws of the market. Current efforts to place economic values on environmental goods are discussed. The inadequacy of using either standard economic approaches or approaches suggested by ecological economists to place market values on biodiversity …
Further Problems with Neoclassical Environmental Economics
Progress and Environmental Sustainability
One world, one experiment: Addressing the biodiversity—economics conflict
Trade and Environmental Sustainability: An Evolutionary Perspective
Economies entirely dependent upon local environmental resources should have a greater incentive to preserve those resources than economies based on specialization and trade. Evidence from history and prehistory, however, shows that many regionally based economies have collapsed because of environmental overexploitation. Evidence from the past shows that there is a strong connection between environmental degradation, power, and social instability.…
The future of the environment: Ecological economics and technological change
Weak sustainability and viable technologies
Georgescu-Roegen/Daly versus Solow/Stiglitz Revisited
The Evolution of Georgescu-Roegen's Bioeconomics
Georgescu-Roegen's work is usually divided into two categories, his earlier work on consumer and production theory and his later concern with entropy and bioeconomics beginning with his 1966 introductory essay to his collected theoretical papers published in the volume Analytical Economics. Most economists usually praise his earlier work on pure theory and ignore his later work which is highly critical of neoclassical economics. Those economists …
Monetäre Bewertung von Biodiversität: Grundannahmen, Schritte, Probleme und Folgerungen
Biodiversity destruction is an urgent problem on the world-wide environmental policy agenda. To get an idea of the losses for present and future generations and to deduce policy measures, valuations in monetary terms have been discussed and applied to biodiversity. However, the example of biodiversity emphasizes that the application of these measurements is more limited than widely believed. For an ecologically tenable, economically meaningful an…
Toward consilience between biology and economics: The contribution of Ecological Economics
Unlimited Means: Reader on Hunter-Gatherer Economics and the Environment
Resource Use, Institutions, and Sustainability: A Tale of Two Pacific Island Cultures
This paper examines two Pacific Island cultures, Easter Island and Tikopia, and the relationship between natural resource systems, human-made capital, population growth, and institutional change. Easter Island followed a preindustrial society pattern of overshoot-and collapse. However, Tikopia evolved cultural practices leading to zero-population growth and sustainable resource use. Using a modified Lotka- Volterra, predator-prey model, we find (…
Economics (39 works) · Ecology (24 works) · Sustainability (18 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Political science (15 works) · Positive economics (14 works) · Biology (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Natural resource economics (12 works) · Neoclassical economics (12 works)