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“Intergenerational justice when future worlds are uncertain”

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  • Joaquim Silvestre
  • Joaquim Silvestre
  • John E. Roemer
  • Joaquim Silvestre

    (Department of Economics, University of California Davis)

Abstract

Let there be a positive (exogenous) probability that, at each date, the human species will disappear. We postulate an Ethical Observer (EO) who maximizes intertemporal welfare under this uncertainty, with expected-utility preferences. Various social welfare criteria entail alternative von Neumann- Morgenstern utility functions for the EO: utilitarianism, Rawlsianism, and an extension of the latter that corrects for the size of population. Our analysis covers, first, a cake-eating economy, where the utilitarian and Rawlsian recommend the same allocation. Second, a productive economy with education and capital. There, however, the recommendations of the two Ethical Observers are in general different. But when the utilitarian program diverges, then it is optimal for the extended Rawlsian to ignore the uncertainty concerning the possible disappearance of the human species in the future. We conclude discussing the implications for intergenerational welfare maximization in the presence of global warming.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of California, Davis, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number 94.

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Length: 48
Date of creation: 26 Mar 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cda:wpaper:09-4

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Related research

Keywords: discounted utilitarianism; Rawlsian; sustainability; maximin; uncertainty; expected utility; von Neumann-Morgenstern; dynamic welfare maximization;

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References

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  1. Llavador, Humberto & Roemer, John E. & Silvestre, Joaquim, 2009. "A Dynamic Analysis of Human Welfare in a Warming Planet," Working Papers 09-5, University of California at Davis, Department of Economics.
  2. Basu, Kaushik & Mitra, Tapan, 2007. "Utilitarianism for infinite utility streams: A new welfare criterion and its axiomatic characterization," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 350-373, March.
  3. Dasgupta, Partha, 1974. "On some alternative criteria for justice between generations," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 405-423, November.
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Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. What intertemporal policy objective to take?
    by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2009-12-09 04:04:00
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Cited by:
  1. Llavador, Humberto & Roemer, John E. & Silvestre, Joaquim, 2009. "A Dynamic Analysis of Human Welfare in a Warming Planet," Working Papers 09-5, University of California at Davis, Department of Economics.
  2. Llavador, Humberto & Roemer, John E. & Silvestre, Joaquim, 2011. "“A dynamic analysis of human welfare in a warming planet”," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(11), pages 1607-1620.
  3. Wolf, Stephan, 2010. "An intergenerational social contract for common resource usage: A reality-check for Harsanyi and Rawls," The Constitutional Economics Network Working Papers 02-2010, University of Freiburg, Department of Economic Policy and Constitutional Economic Theory.
  4. Humberto Llavador & John E. Roemer & Joaquim Silvestre, 2012. "Should we sustain? And if so, sustain what? Consumption or the quality of life?," Working Papers 1222, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.

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