IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/wepxxx/v02y2016i04ns2382624x16500223.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Growth, Water Resilience, and Sustainability: A DSGE Model Applied to South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Chuan-Zhong Li

    (Department of Economics, Uppsala University, Sweden‡The Beijer Institute, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Sweden§School of Business, Ningbo University, China)

  • Ranjula Bali Swain

    (#x2020;Misum, Stockholm School of Economics and Department of Economics, Södertörn University, Sweden)

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to study how water resilience affects economic growth and dynamic welfare with special reference to South Africa. While water may become a limiting factor for future development in general, as a drought prone and water poor country with rapid population growth, South Africa may face more serious challenges for sustainable development. Analyzing the DSGE model, we conduct numerical simulations for different parameter configurations with varying discount rate, climate change scenario, and the degree of uncertainty in future precipitation. We find that with sufficient capital accumulation, development may still be sustainable despite increased future water scarcity and decreased long-run sustainable welfare. While stochastic variation in precipitation has a negative effect on water resilience and the expected dynamic welfare, the effect is mitigated by persistence in the precipitation pattern. With heavier time discounting and lower capital formation, however, the current welfare may not be sustained.

Suggested Citation

  • Chuan-Zhong Li & Ranjula Bali Swain, 2016. "Growth, Water Resilience, and Sustainability: A DSGE Model Applied to South Africa," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 2(04), pages 1-23, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:wepxxx:v:02:y:2016:i:04:n:s2382624x16500223
    DOI: 10.1142/S2382624X16500223
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S2382624X16500223
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S2382624X16500223?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arrow, Kenneth J. & Dasgupta, Partha & Goulder, Lawrence H. & Mumford, Kevin J. & Oleson, Kirsten, 2012. "Sustainability and the measurement of wealth," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(3), pages 317-353, June.
    2. Li, Chuan-Zhong & Lofgren, Karl-Gustaf, 2006. "Comprehensive NNP, social welfare, and the rate of return," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 90(2), pages 254-259, February.
    3. Kenneth J. Arrow & Maureen L. Cropper & Christian Gollier & Ben Groom & Geoffrey M. Heal & Richard G. Newell & William D. Nordhaus & Robert S. Pindyck & William A. Pizer & Paul R. Portney & Thomas Ste, 2014. "Editor's Choice Should Governments Use a Declining Discount Rate in Project Analysis?," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 8(2), pages 145-163.
    4. Mäler, Karl-Göran & Li, Chuan-Zhong, 2010. "Measuring sustainability under regime shift uncertainty: a resilience pricing approach," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(6), pages 707-719, December.
    5. Rashid Hassan, 2003. "Economy-wide benefits from water-intensive industries in South Africa: Quasi-input-output analysis of the contribution of irrigation agriculture and cultivated plantations in the Crocodile River catch," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(2), pages 171-195.
    6. Dasgupta, Partha, 2004. "Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199267194.
    7. Anthony Letsoalo & James Blignaut & Theuns de Wet & Martin de Wit & Sebastiaan Hess & Richard S.J. Tol & Jan van Heerden, 2005. "Triple Dividends Of Water Consumption Charges In South Africa," Working Papers FNU-62, Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University, revised Apr 2005.
    8. Mikhail Golosov & John Hassler & Per Krusell & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2014. "Optimal Taxes on Fossil Fuel in General Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(1), pages 41-88, January.
    9. Martin L. Weitzman, 2001. "A Contribution to the Theory of Welfare Accounting," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 103(1), pages 1-23, March.
    10. Kenneth Arrow & Partha Dasgupta & Karl-Göran Mäler, 2003. "Evaluating Projects and Assessing Sustainable Development in Imperfect Economies," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 26(4), pages 647-685, December.
    11. Li, Chuan-Zhong & Lofgren, Karl-Gustaf, 2000. "Renewable Resources and Economic Sustainability: A Dynamic Analysis with Heterogeneous Time Preferences," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 236-250, November.
    12. Nieuwoudt, W. Lieb & Backeberg, G.R. & du Plessis, H.M., 2004. "The value of water in the South African economy: Some implications," Agrekon, Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA), vol. 43(2), pages 1-22, June.
    13. Sterner, Thomas & Tol, Richard S. J. & Weitzman, Martin L. & Pizer, William A. & Portney, Paul R. & Arrow, Kenneth J. & Cropper, Maureen L. & Gollier, Christian & Groom, Ben & Heal, Geoffrey M. & Newe, 2014. "Should Governments Use a Declining Discount Rate in Project Analysis?," Scholarly Articles 33373349, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    14. Serrao, Emmanuel Adilson S. & Nepstad, Daniel & Walker, Robert, 1996. "Upland agricultural and forestry development in the Amazon: sustainability, criticality and resilience," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 3-13, July.
    15. Brian Walker & Leonie Pearson & Michael Harris & Karl-Göran Maler & Chuan-Zhong Li & Reinette Biggs & Tim Baynes, 2010. "Incorporating Resilience in the Assessment of Inclusive Wealth: An Example from South East Australia," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 45(2), pages 183-202, February.
    16. Koundouri, Phoebe, 2000. "Three approaches to measuring natural resource scarcity: theory and application to groundwater," MPRA Paper 38265, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    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. Spencer Bastani & Tomer Blumkin & Luca Micheletto, 2016. "Anti-discrimination Legislation and the Efficiency-Enhancing Role of Mandatory Parental Leave," Working Papers 088, "Carlo F. Dondena" Centre for Research on Social Dynamics (DONDENA), Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi.
    2. Dario Aversa & Nino Adamashvili & Mariantonietta Fiore & Alessia Spada, 2022. "Scoping Review (SR) via Text Data Mining on Water Scarcity and Climate Change," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-13, December.

    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. Chuan-Zhong Li & Gunnar Isacsson, 2012. "Valuing urban accessibility and air quality in Sweden," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 881-898, June.
    2. Hänsel, Martin C. & Quaas, Martin F., 2018. "Intertemporal Distribution, Sufficiency, and the Social Cost of Carbon," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 520-535.
    3. Freeman, Mark C. & Groom, Ben, 2016. "How certain are we about the certainty-equivalent long term social discount rate?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 152-168.
    4. Li, Chuan-Zhong & Löfgren, Karl-Gustaf, 2012. "Growth, Pollution, and Money-Metric Welfare in Imperfect Markets," CERE Working Papers 2012:15, CERE - the Center for Environmental and Resource Economics.
    5. Carl Obst & Lars Hein & Bram Edens, 2016. "National Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosystem Assets and Their Services," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 64(1), pages 1-23, May.
    6. Collins, Ross D. & Selin, Noelle E. & de Weck, Olivier L. & Clark, William C., 2017. "Using inclusive wealth for policy evaluation: Application to electricity infrastructure planning in oil-exporting countries," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 23-34.
    7. Graciela Chichilnisky & Peter J. Hammond & Nicholas Stern, 2020. "Fundamental utilitarianism and intergenerational equity with extinction discounting," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(2), pages 397-427, March.
    8. Frederick Ploeg & Armon Rezai, 2019. "Simple Rules for Climate Policy and Integrated Assessment," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(1), pages 77-108, January.
    9. Yamaguchi, Rintaro & Shah, Payal, 2020. "Spatial discounting of ecosystem services," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    10. Masayuki Sato & Kenta Tanaka & Shunsuke Managi, 2018. "Inclusive wealth, total factor productivity, and sustainability: an empirical analysis," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 20(4), pages 741-757, October.
    11. Sato, Masayuki & Phim, Runsinarith & Managi, Shunsuke, 2015. "Sustainability indicators and the shadow price of natural capital," MPRA Paper 62612, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Asheim, Geir B. & Hartwick, John M. & Yamaguchi, Rintaro, 2023. "Sustainable per capita consumption under population growth," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    13. Yamaguchi, Rintaro, 2020. "Available capital, utilized capital, and shadow prices in inclusive wealth accounting," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    14. Mota, Rui Pedro & Cunha-e-Sá, Maria A., 2019. "The Role of Technological Progress in Testing Adjusted Net Savings: Evidence from OECD Countries," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 1-1.
    15. Rintaro Yamaguchi & Moinul Islam & Shunsuke Managi, 2019. "Inclusive wealth in the twenty-first century: a summary and further discussion of Inclusive Wealth Report 2018," Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 101-111, August.
    16. Brazee, Richard J., 2018. "Impacts of declining discount rates on optimal harvest age and land expectation values," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 27-38.
    17. Richard S.J. Tol, 2018. "The impact of climate change and the social cost of carbon," Working Paper Series 1318, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    18. Anna M. Dugan & Timo Trimborn, 2020. "The Optimal Extraction of Non-Renewable Resources under Hyperbolic Discounting," Economics Working Papers 2020-17, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    19. Partha Dasgupta, 2013. "The Nature of Economic Development and the Economic Development of Nature," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1349, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    20. Yamaguchi, Rintaro & Managi, Shunsuke, 2019. "Backward- and Forward-looking Shadow Prices in Inclusive Wealth Accounting: An Example of Renewable Energy Capital," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 337-349.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Water resilience; growth; dynamic welfare; sustainability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General
    • O55 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water

    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:wsi:wepxxx:v:02:y:2016:i:04:n:s2382624x16500223. 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: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/wep/wep.shtml .

    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.