SABIIA - Sistema Aberto e Integrado de Informação em Agricultura (Sabiia)

This article challenges the conventional result that a tighter environmental tax has no long-run effect on human capital accumulation in the presence of pollution arising from final output production. It demonstrates that the technology used in the abatement sector determines the existence and the direction of the growth-effect. A tighter environmental tax rises (respectively reduces) human capital accumulation in the presence of pollution arising from final production, if the abatement sector is relatively more intensive in human (resp. physical) capital than final sector. That result always holds for finite lifetime but for infinite lifetime it only holds when labor supply is endogenous. The transitional impact of a tighter environmental policy is also...

Environmental Policy, Education and Growth: A Reappraisal when Lifetime Is Finite

Palavras-chave: Growth; Environment; Overlapping Generations; Human Capital; Abatement; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies; Q5; Q58.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/101379

This article demonstrates that when finite lifetime is introduced in a Lucas (1988) growth model, the environmental policy may enhance growth both in the short- and the long-run, while pollution does not influence educational activities, labor supply is not elastic and human capital does not enter the utility function. This is because finite lifetime and the appearance of newborns at each date creates a turnover of generations which disconnects the aggregate consumption growth to the interest rate. We show that the shorter is the horizon, the greater the effect of the environmental policy on growth, because the higher the “generational turnover effect”. We also demonstrate that when time is not the single production factor in education, the environmental...

Environmental Policy, Education and Growth with Finite Lifetime: the Role of Abatement Technology

Palavras-chave: Growth; Environment; Overlapping Generations; Human Capital; C; O.

Ano: 2008

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/42146

This note shows that the assumptions about the abatement technology modify the impact of the environmental taxation (both the size and the “direction”) on the long-run growth driven by human capital accumulation à la Lucas (1988), when the source of pollution is private consumption and lifetime is finite. When the human capital’s share in the abatement services production is higher (respectively lower) than in the final output production, a higher environmental tax reduces (resp. increases) the allocation of human capital in production sectors (abatement service and final output) and boostes (resp. decreases) the BGP rate of growth. When abatement services are produced with the final output, the environmental taxation does not influence growth.

Health-enhancing Activities and the Environment: How Competition for Resources makes the Environmental Policy Beneficial

Palavras-chave: Growth; Environment; Overlapping Generations; Human capital; Finite Lifetime; Abatement; Environmental Economics and Policy; Q5.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/91003

In a two-period overlapping generations model, this paper demonstrates that the relationship between the environmental taxation and the economic activity (level- and growth-output) becomes inverted-U shaped, when the detrimental impact of pollution on health and the private decision of each working-age agent to improve her health are taken into account. Especially, a tighter environmental tax is more likely to promote (rather than to harm) output-level and –growth when health is very sensitive to pollution, the weight of health in preferences is high, the polluting capacity of the production technology is high and the rate of natural purification of pollutants is low. The inverted-U shaped relationship between the environmental tax and the economic...

Macroeconomic Implications of Demography for the Environment: A Life-Cycle Perspective

Palavras-chave: Growth; Environment; Health; Overlapping Generations; Environmental Economics and Policy; Q5.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/55832

This article studies how demography affects the outcome of the environmental policy in a macro-economic perspective, incorporating age-earning profiles in an OLG model à la Blanchard (1985) to capture the age structure effect of the demographic shocks. It first demonstrates, conversely to previous works of the related literature that a decrease in the birth rate may lower the steady-state per capita stock of physical capital even if the aggregate labor supply is exogenous. It also demonstrates that the ageing of population influences the macro-economic impact of the environmental policy according to the cause of the ageing and the life-cycle earnings assumption. Thus, with decreasing age-earning profiles, a lower birth rate reduces the detrimental impact...

Pollution, Health and Life Expectancy: How Environmental Policy Can Promote Growth

Palavras-chave: Demography; Environment; Environmental Economics and Policy; Q56.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/50325

This article investigates the influence of environmental policy on growth assuming that the channel of transmission relies on the link between pollution, health and the survival probability, in an overlapping generations model à la Blanchard (1985) where growth is driven by a mechanism à la Romer (1986). We demonstrate that environmental policy has an ambiguous effect on growth in the steady-state when the detrimental impact of pollution on health and lifetime is taken into account: for low levels of taxation, environmental policy promotes growth while it is harmful to growth for high levels. Furthermore, we show that the environmental policy is more likely to promote growth (i.e. it stimulates growth for a wider range of environmental taxes) when public...

Reconsidering The Impact of Environment on Long-Run Growth When Pollution Influences Health and Agents Have Finite-Lifetime

Palavras-chave: Growth; Environment; Overlapping generations; Environmental Economics and Policy.

Ano: 2007

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/7434

Using an overlapping generation model à la Blanchard (1985) with human capital accumulation, this article demonstrates that the influence of environment on optimal growth in the long-run may be explained by the detrimental effect of pollution on life expectancy. It also shows that, in such a case, greener preferences are growth- and welfare-improving even if the ability of the agents to learn is independent to pollution and utility is additively separable. Finally, it establishes that it is possible to implement a win-win environmental policy.

Time-separable Utility, Leisure and Human Capital Accumulation: What New Implications for the Environment-Growth Nexus?

Palavras-chave: Environmental Economics and Policy.

Ano: 2006

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/12027

Using a time-separable utility function where leisure is introduced through the disutility of working time and is adjusted for quality, as measured by human capital to capture home production, we demonstrate that the environmental policy is harmful for growth. A tighter environmental tax reduces the incentives to educate by increasing leisure time and lowers the steady-state growth rate and lifetime welfare, whatever the source of pollution. We also demonstrate that the intertemporal elasticity of substitution in labor supply plays a crucial role in the marginal impact of the environmental tax on growth and welfare. When the positive influence of human capital is added into preferences (by explicitly modelling the home production sector), we find that the...