Intergenerational Fairness and Climate Change Adaptation Policy: An Economic Analysis
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BORIS DOI
Date of Publication
March 2023
Publication Type
Article
Division/Institute
Subject(s)
Series
Green and Low-Carbon Economy
ISSN or ISBN (if monograph)
2972-3787
Publisher
Bon View Publishing
Language
English
Publisher DOI
Description
Compared to existing needs, climate change adaptation policies are significantly deficient. Since many adaptation measures have the feature of a local public good, and since benefits accrue to later generations mainly, most environmental economists would argue that the public goods issue is the most plausible reason why incentives are often insufficient for achieving the optimal level of adaptation. Within a stylized overlapping generation model, we show that adaptation is subject to severe intergenerational consistency problems, if pure self-interest is a feature of the generation’s behavior. This explains among others why too little is invested into climate change adaptation. We also show that if the distribution of income between generations matters or if generations behave altruistic, this consistency conflict can be solved and offers possibilities for policy intervention.
File(s)
File | File Type | Format | Size | License | Publisher/Copright statement | Content | |
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1-_GLCE3202670_online.pdf | text | Adobe PDF | 156.41 KB | Attribution (CC BY 4.0) | published |