“Competing for sustainability?
An institutionalist analysis of the new development model of the European Union” by Gräbner-Radkowitsch, Hager and Hornykewycz
In this paper, SPACE researchers Claudius Gräbner-Radkowitsch and Theresa Hager collaborate with Anna Hornykewycz (ICAE, JKU Linz) to explore whether the EU’s new economic development model of ‘competitive sustainability’ could serve as a role model for ecologically sustainable development models for advanced economies in general. To this end, they first discuss theoretically the interplay between ‘competitiveness’ and ‘sustainability’ and identify several challenges for combining them. In delineating different interpretations of competitive sustainability, they emphasize that operationalizing the concept requires deliberate design of the institutions governing competition so that it can contribute to sustainability. They substantiate their claim by using input-output data to analyze whether the identified challenges are indeed relevant. They conclude that they are, and finally propose possible solutions.