Secular stagnation and its ecological consequences

The central challenge for the early industrialized countries in the coming decades will be to steer their societies and economic systems onto a sustainable path. The hope that technical progress with more efficient manufacturing processes will lead to less environmental impact has not yet been fulfilled – despite the partial decoupling of raw material consumption and economic growth. Although a unit of GDP can now be generated with less environmental and nature consumption than in the past, the economic growth of recent years has led to more consumption of raw materials and environmental damage in absolute terms.

However, regardless of this trend, there have been signs of a slowdown in growth in industrialized countries for several decades. Some countries, such as Japan, are experiencing almost zero cyclically-adjusted growth. The theory of secular stagnation provides an explanation for this development. It blames dwindling economic growth on structural and irreversible factors such as demographic change and declining productivity gains.

If the theory of secular stagnation is correct, more and more early developed countries will experience declining economic growth or none at all. This raises the question of whether the equation “more economic growth = more environmental damage” also works in reverse. There is still a considerable need for research here. The doctoral project “Secular stagnation and its ecological consequences” is therefore dedicated to the following questions: What would be the ecological consequences of a permanent end to economic growth in the early developed countries? Can secular stagnation bring industrialized countries closer to their climate goals, and if so, how big would the ecological dividend be that could be drawn from this?