Pollution and infectious diseases

Stefano Bosi and David Desmarchelier

No 2016.22, Working Papers from FAERE - French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists

Abstract: Recent empirical contributions highlight the negative impact of pollution on labor supply. This relationship is explained by two mechanisms: (1) pollution modifies agents' work-leisure trade-off as it deteriorates their working conditions (incentive effect); (2) a polluted environment is likely to generate more frequent epidemic outbreaks and to affect agents' immune systems (health effect). Bosi et al. (2015) explore the aggregate consequences of the incentive effect and show that it can generate endogenous fluctuations of the economic activity. The present paper rather focuses on the health effect as we study a Ramsey model augmented with the spread of infectious disease. We find that industrial pollution may generate limit cycles around an endemic steady state. More precisely, the economic system may undergo a transcritical bifurcation followed by two Hopf bifurcations near this steady state.

Keywords: Pollution; SIS model; Ramsey model; Hopf bifurcation; Transcritical bifurcation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D9 I1 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2016-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Forthcoming in International Journal of Economic Theory

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http://faere.fr/pub/WorkingPapers/Bosi_Desmarchelier_FAERE_WP2016.22.pdf First version, 2016 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Pollution and infectious diseases (2018)
Working Paper: Pollution and infectious diseases (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fae:wpaper:2016.22

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