| An important potential avenue for achieving sustainability objectives is to develop policies aimed a fundamental change in value orientation of both consumers and producers. Such a change would induce consumers to opt for "dematerialized" consumption patterns and firm owners and managers not to merely focus on short-run financial targets, but on long run targets with various dimensions, including those related to sustainability. Such policies require a more fundamental understanding of how objective functions of consumers and producers come about, and how they are affected by general norms and values in a society. Traditionally, economists take consumer preferences and firm objectives as given. The present program will deviate from the standard approach by focusing on questions related to the formation of preferences and the formation of firm objectives. Two projects focus on consumers, a third one on firms. |
