Impatience and Intergenerational Equity in a Model of Sustainable Growth

Lee Endress, Sittidaj Pongkijvorasin, James Roumasset and Basharat Pitafi
Additional contact information
Sittidaj Pongkijvorasin: Chulalongkorn University

No 200906, Working Papers from University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics

Abstract: We argue that intergenerational neutrality has been prematurely excluded from the dialogue on sustainable growth. By incorporating Burton’s distinction between intragenerational and intergenerational discounting into a model suitable for analyzing sustainability issues, we are able to accommodate some of the underlying concerns. We show that in an economy with a renewable resource, eschewing intergenerational discounting leads to the implication of a sustained growth path, without the necessity of a sustainability constraint. We find that green net national product remains constant along the optimal approach path to golden rule consumption. This avoids the paradox that maximizing sustainable income leads to unsustained consumption and income.

Keywords: Sustainable development; intergenerational equity; intra-generational discounting; renewable resources; green net national product (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q01 Q41 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2009-05-14
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economics.hawaii.edu/research/workingpapers/WP_09-6.pdf First version, 2009 (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:hai:wpaper:200906

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.economics ... esearch/working.html

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Web Technician ().