Growth, Environment and Uncertain Future Preferences

Alain Ayong Le Kama () and Katheline Schubert

Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) from HAL

Abstract: The attitude of future generations towards environmental assets may well be different from ours, and it is necessary to take into account this possibility explicitly in the current debate about environmental policy. The question we are addressing here is: should uncertainty about future preferences lead to a more conservative attitude towards environment? Previous literature shows that it is the case when society expects that on average future preferences will be more in favor of environment than ours, but this result relies heavily on the assumption of a separability between consumption and environmental quality in the utility function. We show that things are less simple when preferences are non-separable: the attitude of the society now depends not only on the expectation of the change in preferences but also on the characteristics of the economy (impatience, intertemporal flexibility, natural capacities of regeneration of the environment, relative preference for the environment), on its history (initial level of the environmental quality) and on the date at which preferences are expected to change (near or far future).

Keywords: Growth; Environment; Preferences; Uncertainty c ° 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.; Uncertainty c ° 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-05
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00267891
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Published in Environmental and Resource Economics, 2004, 28 (1), pp.31-53. ⟨10.1023/B:EARE.0000023820.15522.a4⟩

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Related works:
Journal Article: Growth, Environment and Uncertain Future Preferences (2004)
Working Paper: Growth, Environment and Uncertain Future Preferences (2004)
Working Paper: Growth, Environment and Uncertain Future Preferences (1999)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-00267891

DOI: 10.1023/B:EARE.0000023820.15522.a4

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