Education and the Political Economy of Environmental Protection

Abstract

We develop a model where agents decide wether to invest in additional education according to their expectations regarding future environmental quality. Then, agents vote on a tax that will be used exclusively to finance environmental protection. Under the assumption of rational and constant expectations, the model may generate multiple equilibria. Moreover, we show that agents'expectations regarding future environmental quality may be self-fulfilling when the public policy is endogenous. This paves the way for a public intervention. Hence, we analyse the long-run dynamic implications of a policy in favour of education, in order to select the higher equilibrium.JEL classification: .

Convergence Co2 Emission in Asean Countries: Augmented Green Solow Model Approach

“…Human capital in ASEAN countries has the impact of lowering emissions levels. The results support the assumption from Raffin (2014) that human capital can have a "technique effect" that can increase the reduction of technology and/or "green awareness effect," so that individuals living in countries with higher levels of human resources might be better understand about the costs and benefits of efforts in achieving better environmental conditions with the existence of retirement to reduce emissions. that it shows trade activities between ASEAN countries that will increase production and revenue and further impact on rising emissions.…”

“…On the other hand, Raffin (2014) assumes that human capital can have a "technique effect" that can increase the reduction of technology and/or "green awareness effect," so that individuals whose living in countries with higher levels of human resources might be better understand the costs and benefits of efforts in achieving better environmental conditions with the existence of retirement to reduce emissions.…”

Environmental projects in the presence of corruption

“…Thalmann (2004) and Bornstein and Lanz (2008), using data from a Swiss referendum on green taxes, show that the acceptance and approval of green taxes is higher among educated agents. Furthermore, Raffin (2010), using data from the Center for International Development (CID) on the secondary school enrollment in 2000 and the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) shows a positive correlation between the two variables and develops a model of political economy that captures the fact that more educated economies display better environmental performance. In the context of firms, Lan and Munro (2013) show that within the firms, the implementation of abatement technologies is determined by the absorptive capacity of internal human capital endowment: the higher the level of human capital, the better the application within the firm.…”

“…Theoretically, a series of papers have adopted specifications that link human capital with environmental quality. For instance, Raffin (2010) and Ikefuji and Horii (2007) are assuming human capital as the only input of production to capture the greater capacity of educated employees to adopt and apply an advanced technology (see, e.g., Fershtman et al 1996;Caselli 1999;Galor and Moav 2000).…”

A cultural model of private provision and the environment

“…We propose two different kinds of extension, (i) we consider heterogeneous agents and (ii) we introduce endogenous cultural change. First, Raffin (2014) considers agents who differ with respect to their level of education (and this heterogeneity is endogenous). She focuses on a political economy framework whereas we study private provision of environmental quality.…”