John Hartwick

Email: hartwick@econ.queensu.ca


John Hartwick celebrated fifty years in the Economics Department of Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario in May 2019. He has published two textbooks and three monographs and many refereed articles in economics journals. In his best known article (American Economic Review, December 1977) he drew attention to the attractive implications of a society accumulating produced capital to compensate for currently using up a depleting natural resource such as oil. This idea has become central to the economics of sustainability.




Papers Published in World Economics:


National Output as Interest on National Capital
Author: John Hartwick

Current national output can be consider as deriving from a collection of capital goods, including a natural capital good. A model is created which considers Net National Product as interest on capital in the economy: a new approach which touches in a non-trivial way on green national accounting. One important implication is that trading nation draws in part on the capital, including natural capital, of its trading partners and exports in part some of its own capital in its exports. It is also necessary to incorporate pollution spillovers Net National Product which is a hugely vexing issue.

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