Kan ekologisk och ekonomisk hållbarhet kombineras? : En studie av en neoklassisk jämviktsmodell och dess relation till hållbarhet

2015 
The background to this master thesis is that the activities linked to the global economy and its growth has created a situation that currently does not uphold the ecological dimension of sustainability. Solutions to reduce the environmental impact of today while economic growth occurs has been criticized and instead economies with low or no growth have been proposed. With this in mind, the research project Beyond GDP growth have started. The master thesis is carried out for economic models which is one of the work packages within the project.The aim of the master thesis is partly to investigate the issue of sustainability with continued GDP growth to determine whether a possible conflict between economic and ecological sustainability exists. The objective is also to simulate a neoclassical equilibrium model for the Swedish economy to study its responses for different growth scenarios (growth, zero growth and negative growth). The parameters GDP, consumption, investment, amount of capital and amount of hours worked are studied. The idea is that the identification of a possible conflict between ecological and economic sustainability, combined with the analysis of the equilibrium model can be used to determine how economic models that take into account both the ecological and the economic dimension of sustainability could be designed.Whether a conflict between the economical and the ecological dimensions of sustainability exists is investigated with the help of a literature review. Furthermore, the neoclassical equilibrium model is not developed from scratch. Instead an already finished equilibrium model of the Finnish economy is used, which is then developed after prerequisites in the Swedish data. The model is then simulated in the time period 1990-2035 with scenarios for growth, zero growth and negative growth. Furthermore, a scenario of zero growth in which working hours are gradually decreases is simulated.The literature review indicates that a potential conflict between the ecological and the economical dimension of sustainability exist. The simulations of the neoclassical equilibrium model provides reliable results for the parameters GDP, consumption and amount of hours worked. The model's major weakness, however, is investments that differs in comparison with the data, which is probably the reason that minor deviations also occurs for amount of capital.The equilibrium model and the literature review are then discussed and the conclusion is made that the biggest weakness of the neoclassical equilibrium model is that it does not take into account natural resources (including energy) as a production function nor how pollutants affect them. A proposal which in turn is drawn up based on the conclusions is to update economic models (e.g. the equilibrium model) to include natural resources as a production factor so that the models also take into account the ecological dimension of sustainability. The result of such a model could then be used to communicate an optimal level of GDP and create consensus among economists, environmental scientists and policy makers about how a potential conflict between economic and ecological sustainability can be managed.
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