| Summary: | Part of a special issue on sustainable development. Two axioms are introduced that capture the idea of sustainable development—requiring that neither the present nor the future should play a dictatorial role in society's choices—and the welfare criterion that they imply is characterized. Two theorems show that sustainable preferences that satisfy these axioms exist, and a full characterization is provided. A further three axioms study a standard dynamical system representing the growth of a renewable-resource economy, give a “turnpike” theorem, and exhibit the difference between sustainable optima and the ones according to discounted utilitarianism.
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