Le 5 mars 2009, par Pierre Jacquet, Valérie Reboud,
Our goal in this short paper is to highlight both the complex nature of sustainable development and the challenges of decision making, before turning to North-South aspects and to a possible role for development finance institutions. In a first section, we document some of the conceptual issues that decision making in the broad field of sustainable development is confronted with. In a second section, we review the techniques and instruments available to the economist. Thirdly, we discuss the role of economists. In the last section, we highlight the role that development finance institutions can play as incentive changers and promoters of international collective action.