IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/uqsers/152091.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Equity between overlapping generations

Author

Listed:
  • Quiggin, John

Abstract

This note is a demonstration that, in the presence of overlapping generations and under standard conditions for a social welfare ordering (Pareto optimality, transitivity, independence), the only ordering consistent with utilitarianism for all people currently alive at any given point in time is one based on weighting all people equally, regardless of their date of birth. In particular, this implies that, under reasonable conditions, the appropriate choice for the pure rate of social time preference is equal to zero.

Suggested Citation

  • Quiggin, John, 2008. "Equity between overlapping generations," Risk and Sustainable Management Group Working Papers 152091, University of Queensland, School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:uqsers:152091
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.152091
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/152091/files/WPC08_01.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.152091?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1985. "The equity premium: A puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-161, March.
    2. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801.
    3. 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.
    4. Schelling, Thomas C, 1995. "Intergenerational discounting," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 23(4-5), pages 395-401.
    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. John Quiggin, 2012. "Stabilizing the Global Climate: A Simple and Robust Benefit-Cost Analysis," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 94(2), pages 291-300.
    2. Stern, Nicholas, 2014. "Ethics, equity and the economics of climate change paper 2: economics and politics," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 62704, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Tanguy Isaac & Paolo Piacquadio, 2015. "Equity and efficiency in an overlapping generation model," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(3), pages 549-565, March.
    4. Lugovoy, O. & Polbin, A., 2016. "On Intergenerational Distribution of the Burden of Greenhouse Gas Emissions," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 31(3), pages 12-39.
    5. repec:lsg:lsgwps:wp84 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Maya Eden, 2023. "The Cross‐Sectional Implications of the Social Discount Rate," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(6), pages 2065-2088, November.
    7. Nicholas Stern, 2013. "Ethics, equity and the economics of climate change. Paper 2: Economics and Politics," GRI Working Papers 84b, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

    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. George Economides & Anastasio Xepapadeas, 2019. "The effects of climate change on a small open economy," CESifo Working Paper Series 7582, CESifo.
    2. Fleurbaey, Marc & Zuber, Stéphane, 2015. "Discounting, beyond utilitarianism," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 9, pages 1-52.
    3. Lee, K. & Linton, O. & Whang, Y-J., 2020. "Testing for Time Stochastic Dominance," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 20121, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    4. Hepburn, Cameron & Koundouri, Phoebe & Panopoulou, Ekaterini & Pantelidis, Theologos, 2009. "Social discounting under uncertainty: A cross-country comparison," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 140-150, March.
    5. Stan Olijslagers & Sweder van Wijnbergen, 2019. "Discounting the Future: on Climate Change, Ambiguity Aversion and Epstein-Zin Preferences," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-030/VI, Tinbergen Institute.
    6. Marc Fleurbaey & Stéphane Zuber, 2012. "Climate policies deserve a negative discount rate," Working Papers halshs-00728193, HAL.
    7. Cameron Hepburn & Greer Gosnell, 2014. "Evaluating impacts in the distant future: cost–benefit analysis, discounting and the alternatives," Chapters, in: Giles Atkinson & Simon Dietz & Eric Neumayer & Matthew Agarwala (ed.), Handbook of Sustainable Development, chapter 9, pages 140-159, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Gollier, Christian, 2021. "The Welfare Cost of Ignoring the Beta," FEEM Working Papers 309916, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    9. Davidson, Marc D., 2014. "Zero discounting can compensate future generations for climate damage," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 40-47.
    10. Cameron Hepburn & Hakon Sælen & Giles Atkinson & Simon Dietz, 2008. "Risk, inequality and time in the welfare economics of climate change: is the workhorse model underspecified?," Economics Series Working Papers 400, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    11. Pasquale Lucio Scandizzo, 2014. "The social rate of discount, climate change and real options," CEIS Research Paper 309, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 18 Feb 2014.
    12. Cherbonnier, Frédéric & Gollier, Christian, 2018. "Risk-adjusted social discount rates," TSE Working Papers 18-972, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Dec 2020.
    13. Scarborough, Helen, 2011. "Intergenerational equity and the social discount rate," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 55(2), pages 1-14.
    14. Kjell Arne Brekke & Olof Johansson-Stenman, 2008. "The behavioural economics of climate change," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 24(2), pages 280-297, Summer.
    15. Baum, Seth D., 2009. "Description, prescription and the choice of discount rates," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 197-205, November.
    16. repec:bla:opecrv:v:33:y:2009:i:1:p:1-22 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Partha Dasgupta, 2008. "Discounting climate change," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 141-169, December.
    18. Ravi Bansal & Marcelo Ochoa, 2011. "Welfare Costs of Long-Run Temperature Shifts," NBER Working Papers 17574, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Frank Grundig, 2012. "Dealing with the temporal domain of regime effectiveness: A further conceptual development of the Oslo-Potsdam solution," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 111-127, May.
    20. Liu, Liqun, 2012. "Inferring the rate of pure time preference under uncertainty," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 27-33.
    21. Sjølie, Hanne K. & Latta, Greg S. & Solberg, Birger, 2013. "Dual discounting in climate change mitigation in the forest sector," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 416-431.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Environmental Economics and Policy; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy;

    JEL classification:

    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • Q00 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - General

    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:ags:uqsers:152091. 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/decuqau.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.