PUBLICATIONS

In reply to a recent opinion piece in the Financial Times, Prof Peter A. Victor challenges the relevance of David Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage in today’s world of mobile capital, arguing that it should not be employed to justify regressive environmental and social policies.

The article explores how modern capitalism’s shift from labour to assets creates a legitimation crisis of contemporary wealth-based capitalism, leaving wealth elites grappling with meaning, purpose, and survival in a system devoid of traditional moral justification.

New analysis commissioned by FFCC has found that the costs of Britain’s unhealthy food system amount to £268 billion every year – almost equivalent to the total annual UK healthcare spend. The report by CUSP co-director Tim Jackson provides the first comprehensive estimate of the food-related cost of chronic disease, caused by the current food system.

This report focuses on how to finance the green transition of established SMEs in England. Prior demand-side research demonstrated that surveyed SME access to debt finance for the ‘green transition’ is uneven across the UK and that smaller, less resourced SMEs in more remote locations from banking centres may be most disadvantaged.

This paper explores the crucial issue of financing early-stage green startups, focusing on the types of investors, financial models available, challenges these startups face, and how the green finance ecosystem can better support them.

The paper evaluates system dynamics energy models, investigating how they capture key characteristics of socio-technical transitions, and recommending the creation of a “policy navigator” to map and guide policy testing within sustainability transition frameworks for better decision-making.

This study provides an empirical assessment of how effective the WHO’s Global Monitoring Framework for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) has been in improving COVID-19 resilience in low-income countries. Our findings suggest that future global health policies should focus on the link between NCDs and infectious diseases, especially for vulnerable populations.

Shaped by austere fiscal policy, loose monetary policy, and sustained house-price inflation in stagnant economies, Anglo-American economies have developed a new ‘domestic regime’. Along with digital platforms, a flexible labor market, and an undervalued social reproductive sector, these factors have transformed capitalism.

The Social Enterprise Food Systems project has been exploring how social enterprises can introduce innovations for healthy and sustainable food. We are delighted to launch our Good Practice Guide, which draws on our research, the experiences of our social enterprise partners involved in the project.

Democratic enterprise and economic governance are crucial for addressing societal challenges where hierarchical models fail. This paper examines collective capabilities in 12 mutual social enterprises, exploring how interactions foster collaboration and support organisational democracy.

The increased private provision of publicly funded health and social care in the UK is a highly contentious topic, with policies promoting outsourcing to reduce costs and improve quality. However, evidence suggests that marketisation often fails to achieve these objectives, indicating the profit motive is difficult to align with public care goals.

This paper shows that countries with robust health-related policy targets aimed at reducing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) experienced significantly lower mortality rates during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This commentary responds to a recent article purporting to identify ‘limits to degrowth’. This paper clarifies and sets in context the tensions between growth rates and decoupling rates on which the contested argument is based, disputing the claim that growth is the best way to achieve high rates of decoupling.

Modern economies rely on economic growth for stability and prosperity, but this dependence is ecologically unsustainable. Understanding growth dependency is crucial. We propose a sector-led framework to transform these reliances and disrupt their inevitability.

In this working paper, we explore young people’s use of shared social understandings to describe what is important in their present lives, to envision their futures, and to respond to the challenges they identify to the realisation of their good lives.

This commentary, by CUSP researcher Peter A. Victor in the latest C40 Cities journal, reflects on his extensive research of the late Herman Daly’s life and work. A concise summary tailored for policymakers.

Capitalism wields significant cultural influence, reinforced by the advertising industry and a scarcity of depictions of alternatives. Cities can counter this power by revising advertising policies to advocate for pro-social, pro-ecological lifestyles over mass consumption.

In this briefing, the Aldersgate Group together with CUSP outlines necessary next steps from Government to accelerate the adoption of high-quality nature-related disclosures. This follows the announcement that 320 businesses and financial institutions have registered as early adopters of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures’ (TNFD) disclosure framework.

The Routledge Handbook of Green Finance offers an authoritative overview of green finance—its characteristics, principles, mechanisms, and the interplay within environmental, social, and governance measurements. The handbook also critiques existing practices and poses future research questions.

The paper explores energy justice narratives in popular culture, focusing on five Doctor Who episodes from the 1960s, 70s and 80s, highlighting the series’ limited critique of energy production and the class system. The show’s narratives of paternalistic rescue and technological progress remain highly relevant to current energy transition discussions.

We are pleased to announce the release of the audiobook edition of Tim Jackson’s prize-winning book “Post Growth—Life After Capitalism”. Through his own narration, Tim brings a personal touch to the profound themes of Post Growth, offering an accessible and engaging experience for audiences to absorb his insights on the go.

This paper critically examines the potential effects of commercialising psychedelic substances. Drawing parallels with the well-established commercialisation of mindfulness, it discusses the societal tensions and ethical conflicts that may arise, focusing on concerns about distortion of original practices, co-optation reinforcing neoliberal principles, and cost-cutting alterations.

This timely Handbook provides a state-of-the-art overview of research on changing behaviour to become less environmentally harmful. Exploring how well-designed, contextually appropriate behaviour change interventions can work, it charts a path that challenges traditional assumptions to maximise environmental impact.

This account of ecological macroeconomics begins with its origins, including the development of some of its defining components by key contributors, followed by an overview of recent research in ecological macroeconomics with an emphasis on models. It concludes with a set of research questions that give some idea of possible future directions for the discipline.

This viewpoint paper addresses the use of sustainability frameworks in embedding education for sustainability into the curriculum of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), focusing on the paradox that sustainability frameworks must facilitate transformation of existing structures whilst also being well-enough aligned with current conditions to be readily adopted by today’s HEIs.

CUSP partners at the Aldersgate Group have coordinated a cross-business letter to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, urging Government for leadership and stronger commitment to the green economy.

This Aldersgate Group report with CUSP calls on the UK Government to provide a strong legal basis for financial regulators to support the transition to a net zero and nature positive economy. It finds that financial regulators are limited by a narrow mandate on climate, capacity and resource constraints, and a lack of comprehensive net zero-aligned policy across the economy.

Inspired by a line dancing club in Stoke-on-Trent, and drawing principally on cultural theorist Raymond Williams, this article makes the case for appreciating the ways that cultural practices age and change over time.

Written by CUSP researchers Fergus Lyon and Amy Burnett, this report for the UK Food, Farming and Countryside Commission seeks to understand how new and emerging markets in natural capital fit into a changing landscape for farmers. 

This quantitative study of 4000 adults in the UK found that demographic factors only play a minimal role in explaining the likelihood of people being able to experience flow, suggesting that the rewards of flow may be available across society, irrespective of demographics.

This working paper describes a two-region post-Keynesian stock-flow consistent macroeconomic model set out to analyse macroeconomic implications of a postgrowth transition in advanced countries on the economic and environmental conditions in the rest of the world.

This research provides the first assessment of the complex relationship between materialistic goal orientation and flow experiences in a shopping context. Our findings challenge the assumption that materialism impedes flow due to a lack of interest in, liking for, or goal alignment with flow-conducive activities. Rather, materialistic goals appear likely to undermine flow experiences due to factors that are consistent across activity types, such as trait levels of self-regulatory strength.

Earth is in overshoot. The relentless pursuit of economic growth in the name of “progress” has stressed the planet beyond its limits. This richly illustrated book by CUSP co-investigator Prof Peter A Victor describes the current predicament and how economics can help find a path to a post-growth future.

The sociology of consumption has had a fraught relationship with aesthetics, with varying levels of interest in the concept throughout the history of the discipline. Today, aesthetics is barely mentioned at all and is not considered to be relevant to enabling transitions towards more sustainable futures.

Climate activists are confronted with an increasing tension between the need for urgent climate action and a sense that it could already be too late to prevent ‘dangerous’ or ‘runaway’ climate change. This paper investigates the narrative shift, its impact on activism, and strategies that overcome its temporal contradictions.

This working paper describes an extension of the stock-flow consistent FALSTAFF model to test the existence of a monetary growth imperative. The extension is designed to simulate the phenomenon known as Baumol’s cost disease which arises from the existence of differential labour productivity rates in a mixed economy.