Resource Extraction and Uncertain Tipping Points

Jon Vislie ()
Additional contact information
Jon Vislie: Dept. of Economics, University of Oslo, Postal: Department of Economics, University of Oslo, P.O Box 1095 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway, http://www.sv.uio.no/econ/english/

No 03/2017, Memorandum from Oslo University, Department of Economics

Abstract: A global planning problem is analyzed for extracting an exhaustible resource like oil when resource extraction – the only source for current consumption – also generates additions to the stock of GHGs that influence the likelihood of hitting a threshold representing climate change. We derive conditions for optimal extraction when we take into account joint emissions that accumulate to a stock that is governing the planner’s beliefs of facing a climate change that will involve a loss in the production capacity of the global economy. Except for “annuity of the continuation payoff”, which is the stationary rate of welfare after a climate change, the optimality conditions are very similar to the results found in Loury (1978) - where optimal extraction of a non-renewable resource of unknown size was analyzed. Not surprisingly we find that extraction has a cost (“environmental cost”) beyond the standard opportunity cost (“resource rent”), implying a lower rate of extraction as long as no threshold has been hit, compared to the risk-free case. Such saving has an expected rate of return along an optimal strategy should be balanced against the standard required rate of return - the Keynes- Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans-condition.

Keywords: Resource extraction; tipping point uncertainty; climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 Q32 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2017-07-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sv.uio.no/econ/english/research/unpubli ... 017/memo-03-2017.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:osloec:2017_003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Memorandum from Oslo University, Department of Economics Department of Economics, University of Oslo, P.O Box 1095 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mari Strønstad Øverås ().