2002 World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists

This paper investigates the role of human capital and knowledge-based services in determining the materials intensity, and therefore the environmental impacts of consumption. The model presented generates a stylised structural dynamics of the economy: a phase of growing materials throughput is superseded by a phase of dematerialisation and service-intensive consumption. It is assumed, that consumption is a time-requiring activity, and that knowledge-based services play an important role in shaping the material requirements of consumption. The accumulation of human capital can therefore enable consumers to substitute service-time for commodities as the economy develops. In this way, both the allocation of time and the material intensity of the life-process is endogenously determined in a dynamic model of economic development.



	Paper Title:	Dematerialisation, Time Allocation, And The Service Economy
	Presenting Author:	Mario Cogoy (Department of Economics and Statistics - University of Trieste)
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	Abstract:	This paper investigates the role of human capital and knowledge-based services in determining the materials intensity, and therefore the environmental impacts of consumption. The model presented generates a stylised structural dynamics of the economy: a phase of growing materials throughput is superseded by a phase of dematerialisation and service-intensive consumption. It is assumed, that consumption is a time-requiring activity, and that knowledge-based services play an important role in shaping the material requirements of consumption. The accumulation of human capital can therefore enable consumers to substitute service-time for commodities as the economy develops. In this way, both the allocation of time and the material intensity of the life-process is endogenously determined in a dynamic model of economic development.
	Link to paper:	http://weber.ucsd.edu/~carsonvs/papers/65.doc

	Session / Day / Time	1I / Monday / 8:00 - 10:00 am

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