Multidimensional Trade Theory and Ramsey Effects: Biological Metabolism as Experimental Test on Sustainable Life Expectancy

In this paper the following question is answered: Is the sustainable growth or optimal life expectancy generated by the constancy of the production possibilities frontier (PPF)? At this end, I study the effects of growth volatility — a perturbation in the PPF of a given economy (human organism)—on growth’s sustainability. I use a laboratory experiment’s results and propose a theory to address this issue. I find the human organism's multidimensional exchange mechanism, consisting of more or less integral compensation processes for negative and positive externalities, is responsible for the volatility of human growth, the main determinant of life expectancy, analogous in principle to the relationship between the processes of economic growth volatility and sustainability. Because the analogy is established the PPF appears to be the sole determinant of the sustainability of economic growth (life expectancy).