Intergenerational Justice and Sustainability under the Leximin Ethic

John Roemer

No 1512, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: We model an intergenerational society, with a representative agent at each date, who must deplete a renewable resource, from which he derives utility, to produce consumption goods. We adopt the intergenerational lexicographic minimum as the social welfare function. Initially, technological progress is assumed to exist exogenously. We study the technological requirements for the leximin solution to support non-decreasing welfare over time, and a non-decreasing level of the natural resource. Three utility functions are studied. With a CES utility function, possessing less substitutability than the Cobb-Douglas, the leximin solution involves increasing utilities over time and an increasing size of the natural resource, if the rate of transformation of the resource into the consumption good is greater than a computed bound. Finally we study a model with endogenous technical progress.

Keywords: Leximin; Sustainability; Technical change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 D90 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2005-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published in J.E. Roemer and K. Suzumura (eds.), Intergenerational Justice and Sustainability, Palgrave, 2007

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