Earlier this year, the UPF Barcelona School of Management published the book Embracing Post-Growth: Sustainable Paths Beyond Conventional Economic Approaches, edited by Oriol Amat and Marcos Eguiguren. In the book, there is Chapter 5: Planning for Post-Growth, where Cornel Ban of the Copenhagen Business School, Jacob Hasselbalch of the Copenhagen Business School and Matthias Kranke of the College for Social Sciences and Humanities of the University Alliance Ruhr argue that a transition to a post-growth economy requires democratic economic planning.
A summary of the chapter can be found below:
Planning is back, but its growth-first orientation is untenable under
ecological limits. This chapter outlines post-growth planning as a
pragmatic blend of indicative and sectoral planning centered on
democratic deliberation. Using postwar French indicative planning
as a template, we show that effectiveness hinges on state control
of credit and coordination across fiscal, industrial, and monetary
policy—capacities later undone by liberalization. Post-growth planning
repurposes these tools to secure sufficiency, justice, and resilience,
guided by alternative metrics to GDP and provisioning systems
(energy, housing, care) aligned with ecological ceilings. We sketch
a multi-scalar architecture: supranational credit coordination (e.g., a
European Credit Council), national reforms to welfare and taxation
for sufficiency, and local experiments that democratize provisioning.
Finance becomes an explicit site of planning, governed through public
and cooperative institutions. Overall, planning beyond growth is both
necessary and feasible now, provided institutions are democratized,
credit is steered, and metrics reflect planetary realities.
You can read the chapter and the rest of the book here.