Distributive impact of structural change: does environmental degradation matter?

Angelo Antoci, Paolo Russu () and Elisa Ticci ()

Working Papers - Economics from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa

Abstract: Vulnerability to reduction of natural capital depends on defensive substitution possibilities that, in turn, are affected by the availability of other productive factors. However in several developing countries asset distribution tends to be highly skewed. Taking into account these elements, this paper proposes a model considering an economy polarized into two classes (the rich and the poor) and characterized by the following stylized facts: income and productivity of the rural poor is highly dependent on natural resources; labour remuneration in rural sector represents the opportunity cost for wage labour; the rich can partially substitute natural capital with physical capital accumulation and wage labour employment. In this context, agents differ for feed back mechanisms and interactions between their choices of production and environmental dynamics. Moreover environmental depletion may trigger economic transition, but the structural change is likely to result regressive.

Keywords: structural change; environmental externalities; economic development; poverty alleviation. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 O11 O13 O15 O41 Q20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.disei.unifi.it/upload/sub/pubblicazioni/repec/pdf/wp07_2008.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Distributive impact of structural change: Does environmental degradation matter? (2009)
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:frz:wpaper:wp2008_07.rdf

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers - Economics from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa Via delle Pandette 9 50127 - Firenze - Italy. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Giorgio Ricchiuti ().