THE EVOLUTION OF GEORGESCU-ROEGEN BIOECONOMICS

Georgescu-Roegen's work is usually divided into two categories, his ea rlier work on consumer and production theory and his later concern wit h entropy and bioeconomics beginning with his 1966 introductory essay to his collected theoretical papers published in the volume Analytical Economics. Most economists usually praise his earlier work on pure th eory and ignore his later work which is highly critical of neoclassica l economics. Those economists sympathetic to his later work usually ta ke the position that he ''saw the light'' and gave up neoclassical the ory some time in the 1960s to turn his attention to the issues of reso urce scarcity and social institutions. It is argued here that there is an unbroken path running from Georgescu's work in pure theory in the 1930s, 1930s, and 1950s, through his writings on peasant economies in the 1960s, lending to his preoccupation with entropy and bioeconomics in the last 25 years of his life. That common thread is his preoccupat ion with ''valuation.'' The choices our species makes about resource u se and the distribution of economic output depends upon our valuation framework. Georgescu-Roegen's work begins in the 1930s with a critical examination of the difficulties with the hedonistic valuation framewo rk of neoclassical economics, moves in the 1960s to the conflict betwe en social and hedonistic valuation, and culminates in the 1970s and 19 80s with his examination of the conflict between individual, social, a nd environmental values. This paper traces the evolution of Georgescu- Roegen's thought about valuation and the environmental and social poli cy recommendations which arise out of his bioeconomic framework.