IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fem/femwpa/2009.104.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

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

Author

Listed:
  • Xavier Pautrel

    (Nantes Atlantique Université Laboratoire d’Économie et de Management de Nantes (LEMNA), Institut d’Économie et de Management de Nantes - IEA)

Abstract

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 environmental policy promotes steady-state growth. This result challenges the finding by Hettich (1998) according to which, in the presence of leisure, the environmental tax does not affect human capital accumulation if the source of pollution is output.

Suggested Citation

  • Xavier Pautrel, 2009. "Time-separable Utility, Leisure and Human Capital Accumulation: What New Implications for the Environment-Growth Nexus?," Working Papers 2009.104, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    • Handle: RePEc:fem:femwpa:2009.104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://feem-media.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/NDL2009-104.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stokey, Nancy L & Rebelo, Sergio, 1995. "Growth Effects of Flat-Rate Taxes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(3), pages 519-550, June.
    2. Prescott, Edward C., 1986. "Theory ahead of business-cycle measurement," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 11-44, January.
    3. Gian Maria Milesi-Ferrett & Nouriel Roubini, 1995. "Growth Effects of Income and Consumption Taxes: Positive and Normative Analysis," NBER Working Papers 5317, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Benhabib, Jess & Rogerson, Richard & Wright, Randall, 1991. "Homework in Macroeconomics: Household Production and Aggregate Fluctuations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(6), pages 1166-1187, December.
    5. Campbell, John Y & Ludvigson, Sydney, 2001. "Elasticities of Substitution in Real Business Cycle Models with Home Protection," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 33(4), pages 847-875, November.
    6. X. Pautrel, 2008. "Reconsidering the Impact of the Environment on Long-run Growth when Pollution Influences Health and Agents have a Finite-lifetime," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 40(1), pages 37-52, May.
    7. Frank Hettich, 1998. "Growth effects of a revenue-neutral environmental tax reform," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 67(3), pages 287-316, October.
    8. Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria & Roubini, Nouriel, 1998. "On the taxation of human and physical capital in models of endogenous growth," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 237-254, November.
    9. Ortigueira, Salvador & Santos, Manuel S, 1997. "On the Speed of Convergence in Endogenous Growth Models," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 383-399, June.
    10. Steven P. Cassou & Kevin J. Lansing, 2006. "Tax Reform with Useful Public Expenditures," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 8(4), pages 631-676, October.
    11. Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria & Roubini, Nouriel, 1998. "Growth Effects of Income and Consumption Taxes," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 30(4), pages 721-744, November.
    12. Cassou, Steven P. & Lansing, Kevin J., 1998. "Optimal fiscal policy, public capital, and the productivity slowdown," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 22(6), pages 911-935, June.
    13. Salvador Ortigueira, 2000. "A dynamic analysis of an endogenous growth model with leisure," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 16(1), pages 43-62.
    14. Brock, William A. & Taylor, M. Scott, 2005. "Economic Growth and the Environment: A Review of Theory and Empirics," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 28, pages 1749-1821, Elsevier.
    15. Greenwood, Jeremy & Hercowitz, Zvi & Huffman, Gregory W, 1988. "Investment, Capacity Utilization, and the Real Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(3), pages 402-417, June.
    16. Grimaud, Andre & Tournemaine, Frederic, 2007. "Why can an environmental policy tax promote growth through the channel of education?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 27-36, April.
    17. Collard, Fabrice, 1998. "Spectral and persistence properties of cyclical growth," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 463-488, November.
    18. Michiel Evers & Ruud Mooij & Daniel Vuuren, 2008. "The Wage Elasticity of Labour Supply: A Synthesis of Empirical Estimates," De Economist, Springer, vol. 156(1), pages 25-43, March.
    19. Xepapadeas, Anastasios, 2005. "Economic growth and the environment," Handbook of Environmental Economics, in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 23, pages 1219-1271, Elsevier.
    20. Hercowitz, Zvi & Sampson, Michael, 1991. "Output Growth, the Real Wage, and Employment Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1215-1237, December.
    21. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1982. "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1345-1370, November.
    22. Keith Blackburn & Dimitrios Varvarigos, 2008. "Human capital accumulation and output growth in a stochastic environment," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 36(3), pages 435-452, September.
    23. Raymond Gradus & Sjak Smulders, 1993. "The trade-off between environmental care and long-term growth—Pollution in three prototype growth models," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 25-51, February.
    24. Bovenberg, A. Lans & Heijdra, Ben J., 1998. "Environmental tax policy and intergenerational distribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 1-24, January.
    25. Heckman, James J, 1976. "A Life-Cycle Model of Earnings, Learning, and Consumption," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(4), pages 11-44, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Basseti, Thomas & Benos, Nikos & Karagiannis, Stelios, 2010. "How policy can influence human capital accumulation and environment quality," MPRA Paper 21754, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Manuel Gomez, 2003. "Effects of Flat-Rate Taxes: to What Extent Does the Leisure Specification Matter?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 6(2), pages 404-430, April.
    2. Pautrel, Xavier, 2012. "Environmental Policy, Education And Growth: A Reappraisal When Lifetime Is Finite," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(5), pages 661-685, November.
    3. Gomez Suarez, Manuel A., 2008. "Utility and production externalities, equilibrium efficiency and leisure specification," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 1496-1519, December.
    4. José Luis Torres Chacon, 2015. "Introduction to Dynamic Macroeconomic General Equilibrium Models," Vernon Press Titles in Economics, Vernon Art and Science Inc, edition 2, number 54, July.
    5. Keith Blackburn & Dimitrios Varvarigos, 2008. "Human capital accumulation and output growth in a stochastic environment," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 36(3), pages 435-452, September.
    6. Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria & Roubini, Nouriel, 1998. "On the taxation of human and physical capital in models of endogenous growth," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 237-254, November.
    7. José Luis Torres Chacon, 2015. "Introduction to Dynamic Macroeconomic General Equilibrium Models [Second Edition, Paperback]," Vernon Press Titles in Economics, Vernon Art and Science Inc, edition 2, number 44.
    8. Hassan, Mahmoud & Oueslati, Walid & Rousselière, Damien, 2020. "Environmental taxes, reforms and economic growth: an empirical analysis of panel data," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 44(3).
    9. Keith Blackburn & Dimitrios Varvarigos, 2006. "Human Capital Accumulation in a Stochastic Environment: Some New Results on the Relationship Between Growth and Volatility," Economics Discussion Paper Series 0618, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    10. Barry, Frank & Devereux, Michael B., 2003. "Expansionary fiscal contraction: A theoretical exploration," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 1-23, March.
    11. Ben Malin, 2006. "Lower-Frequency Macroeconomic Fluctuations: Living Standards and Leisure," 2006 Meeting Papers 752, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. Carlo Carraro & Enrica De Cian & Lea Nicita, 2009. "Modeling Biased Technical Change. Implications For Climate Policy," Working Papers 2009_27, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    13. Gomme, Paul & Greenwood, Jeremy, 1995. "On the cyclical allocation of risk," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 19(1-2), pages 91-124.
    14. Xavier Pautrel, 2015. "Abatement Technology and the Environment–Growth Nexus with Education," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 61(3), pages 297-318, July.
    15. Ricci, Francesco, 2007. "Channels of transmission of environmental policy to economic growth: A survey of the theory," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(4), pages 688-699, February.
    16. Carlo Carraro & Enrica De Cian & Massimo Tavoni, 2009. "Human capital formation and global warming mitigation: evidence from an integrated assessment model," Working Papers 2009_30, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    17. Trabandt, Mathias & Uhlig, Harald, 2011. "The Laffer curve revisited," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(4), pages 305-327.
    18. Ilaski Barañano, 2001. "Endogenous growth and economic fluctuations," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 25(3), pages 515-541, September.
    19. Nouriel Roubini & Gian Maria Milesi-Ferrett, 1994. "Taxation and Endogenous Growth in Open Economies," NBER Working Papers 4881, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Leisure; Human Capital; Environmental Tax;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods
    • Q56 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fem:femwpa:2009.104. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alberto Prina Cerai (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feemmit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.