Destructive Intergenerational Altruism

Abstract

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Cross-Dynastic Intergenerational Altruism

“…The intuition is that although dynasty i gives weight α C on the other dynasties, the other dynasties give weight α C /(N − 1) to dynasty i. This weight goes to zero as the number of dynasties goes to infinity (see also Asheim and Nesje, 2016).…”

Intragenerational Inequality Aversion and Intergenerational Equity

“…], the maximin (or leximin) criterion has then been adopted as yielding the most egalitarian among reasonable (that is, Paretian) social rankings." Asheim and Nesje (2016) use the maximin path as a benchmark for intergenerational equity, as the maximin welfare level offers a lower bound for welfare under other, more sophisticated criteria, such as the Calvo criterion, Sustainable Discounted Utility and Rank Discounted Utility, whose solutions may not be easy to compute in particular problems. Also, more sophisticated forms of intergenerational equity imply time-inconsistency, which has to be dealt with using sophisticated game-theoretic equilibrium selection (Asheim et al, 2020).…”

“…examine the effect of population growth on optimal climate mitigation policies, comparing Total Utilitarianism (which is sensitive to the population size) and Average Utilitarianism (which is not) Anthoff and Emmerling (2019). disentangle the effect of intragenerational and intergenerational inequality aversions on the social cost of carbon.3 SeeAsheim and Ekeland (2016) for a discussion of the interest of this model to study sustainability issues, andAsheim and Nesje (2016) for the analysis of the optimal path in this model under various criteria of intergenerational equity. See alsoAsheim et al (2020) who discuss time-consistency issues for criteria that do not satisfy stationarity, and illustrate their results in theRamsey model.…”

“…For example, trade would require to consider at least two different goods in two locations, and thus at least four decision variables. An easier way to include interactions would be to consider two dynasties that own a share of the same capital stock, as inAsheim and Nesje (2016). As we want to keep results as generic as possible, we avoid such specification.…”