IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/agrebk/qt04k4b21g.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Time perspective and climate change policy

Author

Listed:
  • Karp, Larry
  • Tsur, Yacov

Abstract

The tendency to foreshorten time units as we peer further into the future provides an explanation for hyperbolic discounting at an intergenerational time scale. We study implications of hyperbolic discounting for climate change policy, when the probability of a climate-induced catastrophe depends on the stock of greenhouse gasses. We provide a positive analysis by characterizing the set of Markov perfect equilibria (MPE) of the intergenerational game amongst a succession of policymakers. Each policymaker reflects her generation’s preferences, including its hyperbolic discounting. For a binary action game, we compare the MPE set to a “restricted commitment” benchmark. We compare the associated “constant equivalent discount rates” and the willingness to pay to control climate change with assumptions and recommendations in the Stern Review on Climate Change. “. . .My picture of the world is drawn in perspective. . . I apply my perspective not merely to space but also to time” —Ramsey.

Suggested Citation

  • Karp, Larry & Tsur, Yacov, 2008. "Time perspective and climate change policy," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt04k4b21g, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:agrebk:qt04k4b21g
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/04k4b21g.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Per Krusell & Anthony A. Smith, Jr., 2003. "Consumption--Savings Decisions with Quasi--Geometric Discounting," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(1), pages 365-375, January.
    2. Fujii, Tomoki & Karp, Larry, 2008. "Numerical analysis of non-constant pure rate of time preference: A model of climate policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 83-101, July.
    3. Robert S. Pindyck, 2011. "Fat Tails, Thin Tails, and Climate Change Policy," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 5(2), pages 258-274, Summer.
    4. Sumaila, Ussif R. & Walters, Carl, 2005. "Intergenerational discounting: a new intuitive approach," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 135-142, January.
    5. Karp, Larry, 2005. "Non-Constant Discounting in Continuous Time," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt0nn1t22z, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    6. Kiminori Matsuyama, 1991. "Increasing Returns, Industrialization, and Indeterminacy of Equilibrium," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 617-650.
    7. Karp, Larry S., 2009. "Sacrifice, discounting and climate policy: five questions," CUDARE Working Papers 51612, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    8. Karp, L, 2007. "Non-constant discounting in continuous time," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt8d52f6w7, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    9. Karp, Larry, 2007. "Non-constant discounting in continuous time," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 557-568, January.
    10. Tsur, Yacov & Zemel, Amos, 1998. "Pollution control in an uncertain environment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 22(6), pages 967-975, June.
    11. Karp, Larry, 2005. "Global warming and hyperbolic discounting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2-3), pages 261-282, February.
    12. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801, September.
    13. Cropper, Maureen L & Aydede, Sema K & Portney, Paul R, 1994. "Preferences for Life Saving Programs: How the Public Discounts Time and Age," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 243-265, May.
    14. Skiba, A K, 1978. "Optimal Growth with a Convex-Concave Production Function," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(3), pages 527-539, May.
    15. Collins, Julie, 2007. "Climate Change and Emissions Trading (Power Point)," 2007 Seminar, August 24, 2007, Wellington, New Zealand 97617, New Zealand Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    16. William D. Nordhaus, 2009. "An Analysis of the Dismal Theorem," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1686, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    17. Heal, G., 1998. "Valuing the Future: Economic Theory and Sustainability," Papers 98-10, Columbia - Graduate School of Business.
    18. Karp, Larry S., 2009. "Sacrifice, discounting and climate policy : five questions," CUDARE Working Paper Series 1086, University of California at Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Policy.
    19. Paul Krugman, 1991. "History versus Expectations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 651-667.
    20. Tsur, Yacov & Zemel, Amos, 1996. "Accounting for global warming risks: Resource management under event uncertainty," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 20(6-7), pages 1289-1305.
    21. William D. Nordhaus, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 686-702, September.
    22. Robert J. Barro, 1999. "Ramsey Meets Laibson in the Neoclassical Growth Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(4), pages 1125-1152.
    23. Schelling Thomas C., 2007. "Climate Change: The Uncertainties, the Certainties and What They Imply About Action," The Economists' Voice, De Gruyter, vol. 4(3), pages 1-5, July.
    24. Michael D. Mastrandrea & Stephen H. Schneider, 2001. "Integrated assessment of abrupt climatic changes," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(4), pages 433-449, December.
    25. Heal, Geoffrey, 2005. "Intertemporal Welfare Economics and the Environment," Handbook of Environmental Economics, in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 21, pages 1105-1145, Elsevier.
    26. Martin L. Weitzman, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 703-724, September.
    27. E. S. Phelps & R. A. Pollak, 1968. "On Second-Best National Saving and Game-Equilibrium Growth," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 35(2), pages 185-199.
    28. Clarke, Harry R. & Reed, William J., 1994. "Consumption/pollution tradeoffs in an environment vulnerable to pollution-related catastrophic collapse," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 18(5), pages 991-1010, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Karp, Larry & Tsur, Yacov, 2007. "Climate Policy When the Distant Future Matters: Catastrophic Events with Hyperbolic Discounting," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt99n7v1bp, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    2. Karp, Larry S. & Tsur, Yacov, 2007. "Climate Policy When the Distant Future Matters: Catastrophic Events with Hyperbolic Discounting," CUDARE Working Papers 7186, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    3. Maria Arvaniti & Chandra K. Krishnamurthy & Anne-Sophie Crépin, 2019. "Time-consistent resource management with regime shifts," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 19/329, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    4. Iverson, Terrence, 2012. "Optimal Carbon Taxes with Non-Constant Time Preference," MPRA Paper 43264, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Reyer Gerlagh, 2012. "Carbon Prices for the Next Thousand Years," Review of Environment, Energy and Economics - Re3, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, August.
    6. Terrence Iverson & Scott Denning & Sammy Zahran, 2015. "When the long run matters," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 57-72, March.
    7. Fujii, Tomoki & Karp, Larry, 2008. "Numerical analysis of non-constant pure rate of time preference: A model of climate policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 83-101, July.
    8. Francisco Cabo & Guiomar Martín-Herrán & María Pilar Martínez-García, 2020. "Non-constant Discounting, Social Welfare and Endogenous Growth with Pollution Externalities," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 76(2), pages 369-403, July.
    9. Nesje, Frikk, 2020. "Cross-dynastic Intergenerational Altruism," Working Papers 0678, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    10. Karp, Larry & Tsur, Yacov, 2007. "Discounting and Climate Change Policy," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt5sm6j36x, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    11. repec:dau:papers:123456789/3682 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Ivar Ekeland & Yiming Long & Qinglong Zhou, 2015. "A New Class of Problems in the Calculus of Variations," Papers 1511.00065, arXiv.org.
    13. Karp, Larry, 2005. "Global warming and hyperbolic discounting," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt1n62c5cc, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    14. Geoffrey Heal & Antony Millner, 2013. "Discounting under Disagreement," NBER Working Papers 18999, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Karp, Larry, 2005. "Global warming and hyperbolic discounting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2-3), pages 261-282, February.
    16. Millner, Antony, 2013. "On welfare frameworks and catastrophic climate risks," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 310-325.
    17. Nævdal, Eric & Vislie, Jon, 2013. "Resource Depletion and Capital Accumulation under Catastrophic Risk: Policy Actions against Stochastic Thresholds and Stock Pollution," Memorandum 24/2013, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    18. Nævdal, Erik & Vislie, Jon, 2012. "Resource Depletion and Capital Accumulation under Catastrophic Risk: The Role of Stochastic Thresholds and Stock Pollution," Memorandum 24/2012, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    19. Terrence Iverson & Larry Karp, 2021. "Carbon Taxes and Climate Commitment with Non-constant Time Preference," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(2), pages 764-799.
    20. Winkler, Ralph, 2009. "Now or Never: Environmental Protection under Hyperbolic Discounting," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-22.
    21. Ekeland, Ivar & Karp, Larry S. & Sumaila, Ussif Rashid, 2011. "Equilibrium management of fisheries with altruistic overlapping generations," CUDARE Working Papers 123635, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

    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:cdl:agrebk:qt04k4b21g. 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: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dabrkus.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.