Arbeitspapier

Positional goods, climate change and the social returns to investment

The economic analysis of global warming is dominated by models based on optimal growth theory. This approach can generate biases in the presence of positional goods and status effects. We show that by ignoring these direct consumption externalities, integrated assessment models overestimate the social return to conventional investment and underestimate the optimal amount of investment in mitigation. Empirical evidence on the influence of relative consumption on utility suggests that the bias could be quantitatively significant. Our results from a simple survey support this conclusion.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: Working Paper ; No. 2011-24

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Agricultural Markets and Marketing; Cooperatives; Agribusiness
Thema
representative agent
consumption externalities
positional goods
relative consumption
welfare
global warming
discount rates

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Davis, Leila
Skott, Peter
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
University of Massachusetts, Department of Economics
(wo)
Amherst, MA
(wann)
2011

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:44 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Davis, Leila
  • Skott, Peter
  • University of Massachusetts, Department of Economics

Entstanden

  • 2011

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