IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_5143.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fair Intergenerational Utilitarianism: Risk, its Resolution over Time, and Discounting

Author

Listed:
  • Paolo Giovanni Piacquadio

Abstract

The paper reexamines the welfare economics of intergenerational risk. Risk and its resolution over time are modeled as a decision tree: in each period, the consumption of the current one-period living generation is to be traded-off against uncertain benefits of future generations; as time passes, the planner observes the realized shocks and becomes more informed about the economy. The characterized class of criteria, named fair intergenerational utilitarian, measures social welfare in terms of the ratio between the allocated consumptions and an endogenously-determined equitable reference. This allows social preferences to (i) disentangle aversion to intergenerational inequality from aversion to risk, (ii) exhibit a preference for early resolution of risk, (iii) show different discounting formulas depending on the magnitude of risk and on the timing of its resolution, and (iv) avoid extreme policy recommendations in the presence of fat-tailed catastrophic events.

Suggested Citation

  • Paolo Giovanni Piacquadio, 2014. "Fair Intergenerational Utilitarianism: Risk, its Resolution over Time, and Discounting," CESifo Working Paper Series 5143, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_5143
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp5143.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kenneth J. Arrow & Anthony C. Fisher, 1974. "Environmental Preservation, Uncertainty, and Irreversibility," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 88(2), pages 312-319.
    2. Kjell Arne Brekke & Geir B. Asheim, 2002. "Sustainability when capital management has stochastic consequences," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 19(4), pages 921-940.
    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. Gerlagh, Reyer, 2017. "Generous Sustainability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 94-100.

    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. Piacquadio, Paolo G., 2020. "The ethics of intergenerational risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    2. Frank Krysiak, 2009. "Sustainability and its relation to efficiency under uncertainty," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 41(2), pages 297-315, November.
    3. Arvind Magesan & Matthew A. Turner, 2008. "The Value of Information in Public Decisions," Working Papers tecipa-345, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    4. Michael Finus & Pedro Pintassilgo & Alistair Ulph, 2014. "International Environmental Agreements with Uncertainty, Learning and Risk Aversion," Department of Economics Working Papers 19/14, University of Bath, Department of Economics.
    5. Attanasi, Giuseppe Marco & Montesano, Aldo, 2010. "Testing Value vs Waiting Value in Environmental Decisions under Uncertainty," TSE Working Papers 10-154, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    6. Erik Nelson & Virginia Matzek, 2016. "Carbon Credits Compete Poorly With Agricultural Commodities In An Optimized Model Of Land Use In Northern California," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 7(04), pages 1-24, November.
    7. Michael Peneder & Spyros Arvanitis & Christian Rammer & Tobias Stucki & Martin Wörter, 2022. "Policy instruments and self-reported impacts of the adoption of energy saving technologies in the DACH region," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 369-404, May.
    8. Hansen, Anders Chr., 2006. "Do declining discount rates lead to time inconsistent economic advice?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 138-144, November.
    9. Carsten Helm, 1998. "International Cooperation Behind the Veil of Uncertainty – The Case of Transboundary Acidification," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 12(2), pages 185-201, September.
    10. Edouard Civel & Marc Baudry, 2018. "The Fate of Inventions. What can we learn from Bayesian learning in strategic options model of adoption ?," EconomiX Working Papers 2018-47, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    11. Guillouet, Louise & Martimort, David, 2023. "Acting in the Darkness: Towards some Foundations for the Precautionary Principle," TSE Working Papers 23-1411, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Jul 2024.
    12. Klaus Mittenzwei & David S. Bullock & Klaus Salhofer, 2012. "Towards a theory of policy timing," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 56(4), pages 583-596, October.
    13. Marcello Basili, 2006. "A Rational Decision Rule with Extreme Events," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(6), pages 1721-1728, December.
    14. Eppink, Florian V. & van den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M., 2007. "Ecological theories and indicators in economic models of biodiversity loss and conservation: A critical review," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2-3), pages 284-293, March.
    15. Baumgärtner, Stefan & Quaas, Martin F., 2009. "Ecological-economic viability as a criterion of strong sustainability under uncertainty," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 2008-2020, May.
    16. Asheim, Geir B. & Zuber, Stéphane, 2016. "Evaluating intergenerational risks," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 104-117.
    17. Millner, Antony & Ollivier, Hélène & Simon, Leo, 2014. "Policy experimentation, political competition, and heterogeneous beliefs," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 84-96.
    18. Marvasti, Akbar, 2013. "The role of price expectations and legal uncertainties in ocean mineral, exploration activities," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 68-74.
    19. Jin, Wei & Zhang, ZhongXiang, 2016. "On the mechanism of international technology diffusion for energy technological progress," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 39-61.
    20. Jean-Paul Décamps & Thomas Mariotti & Stéphane Villeneuve, 2006. "Irreversible investment in alternative projects," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 28(2), pages 425-448, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    intergenerational justice; timing of risk resolution; social ordering; discounting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • H43 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Project Evaluation; Social Discount Rate
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • 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

    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:ces:ceswps:_5143. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.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.