Global Warming and Economic Externalities

Armon Rezai, Duncan Foley, Lance Taylor

Publikation: Wissenschaftliche FachzeitschriftOriginalbeitrag in FachzeitschriftBegutachtung

128 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Despite worldwide policy efforts such as the Kyoto Protocol, the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) remains a negative externality. Economic equilibrium paths in the presence of such an uncorrected externality are inefficient; as a consequence, there is no real economic opportunity cost to correcting this externality by mitigating global warming. Mitigation investment using resources diverted from conventional investments can raise the economic well-being of both current and future generations. The economic literature on GHG emissions misleadingly focuses attention on the intergenerational equity aspects of mitigation by using a hybrid constrained optimal path as the “business-as-usual” benchmark. We calibrate a simple Keynes-Ramsey growth model to illustrate the significant potential Pareto improvement from mitigation investment and to explain the equilibrium concept appropriate to modeling an uncorrected negative externality.
OriginalspracheEnglisch
Seiten (von - bis)329 - 351
FachzeitschriftEconomic Theory
Jahrgang49
Ausgabenummer2
DOIs
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 2012

Zitat