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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
A Dynamic Analysis Of Human Welfare In A Warming Planet, Humberto Llavador, John E. Roemer, Joaquim Silvestre
A Dynamic Analysis Of Human Welfare In A Warming Planet, Humberto Llavador, John E. Roemer, Joaquim Silvestre
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have caused atmospheric concentrations with no precedents in the last half a million years, inducing serious uncertainties about future climates and their effects on human welfare. Recent climate science supports the view that the climate stabilization will require very low GHG emissions in the future. We ask: Is a path of low emissions compatible with sustainable levels of human welfare? With steady growth in human quality of life? Addressing these questions requires both defining welfare criteria and empirically estimating the possible paths of the economy. We specify and calibrate a dynamic model with four intertemporal …
A Dynamic Analysis Of Human Welfare In A Warming Planet, Humberto Llavador, John E. Roemer, Joaquim Silvestre
A Dynamic Analysis Of Human Welfare In A Warming Planet, Humberto Llavador, John E. Roemer, Joaquim Silvestre
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Climate science indicates that climate stabilization requires low GHG emissions. Is this consistent with nondecreasing human welfare? Our welfare index, called quality of life (QuoL), emphasizes education, knowledge, and the environment. We construct and calibrate a multigenerational model with intertemporal links provided by education, physical capital, knowledge and the environment. We reject discounted utilitarianism and adopt, first, the Intergenerational Maximin criterion, and, second, Human Development Optimization, that maximizes the QuoL of the first generation subject to a given future rate of growth. We apply these criteria to our calibrated model via a novel algorithm inspired by the turnpike property. The …