Environmental Policy, Education and Growth: A Reappraisal when Lifetime Is Finite

This article demonstrates that when finite lifetime is introduced in a Lucas (1988) growth model, the environmental policy may enhance growth both in the short- and the long-run, while pollution does not influence educational activities, labor supply is not elastic and human capital does not enter the utility function. This is because finite lifetime and the appearance of newborns at each date creates a turnover of generations which disconnects the aggregate consumption growth to the interest rate. We show that the shorter is the horizon, the greater the effect of the environmental policy on growth, because the higher the “generational turnover effect”. We also demonstrate that when time is not the single production factor in education, the environmental policy promotes growth only if time remains the predominant factor. Otherwise, the crowding-out effect of the tighter environmental policy dominates the “generational turnover effect” and growth diminishes. Finally, when the source of pollution is final output rather than physical capital and time is the single factor in education, the environmental does not affect growth in the steady-state, despite the “generational turnover effect”. Nevertheless, if the education good is introduced, the positive influence of the environmental policy appears again.Growth, Environment, Overlapping generations, Human capital

A note on multitask learning and the reorganization of work

In this note, we investigate the necessary condition for a firm to be able to move from Tayloristic to ohlistic organization of work, whatever the economic conditions and the incentives to do it: that workers have the ability to allocate their work-time to several tasks.

Environmental Policy, Education and Growth with Finite Lifetime: the Role of Abatement Technology

This note shows that the assumptions about the abatement technology modify the impact of the environmental taxation (both the size and the “direction”) on the long-run growth driven by human capital accumulation à la Lucas (1988), when the source of pollution is private consumption and lifetime is finite. When the human capital’s share in the abatement services production is higher (respectively lower) than in the final output production, a higher environmental tax reduces (resp. increases) the allocation of human capital in production sectors (abatement service and final output) and boostes (resp. decreases) the BGP rate of growth. When abatement services are produced with the final output, the environmental taxation does not influence growth.Growth, Environment, Overlapping Generations, Human capital, Finite Lifetime, Abatement

Environmental policy, education and growth with finite lifetime: the role of the abatement technology

This note shows that the assumptions about the abatement technology modify the impact of the environmental taxation on the long-run growth driven by human capital accumulation à la Lucas (1988), when lifetime is finite. Whereas no impact of the environmental policy on long-run growth is found when pollution originates from final output and abatement is an activity requiring final output to reduce net emissions, this note demonstrates that a tighter environmental tax enhances human capital accumulation when it is assumed that abatement services are produced with physical capital.

Macroeconomic Implications of Demography for the Environment: A Life-Cycle Perspective

This article studies how demography affects the outcome of the environmental policy in a macro-economic perspective, incorporating age-earning profiles in an OLG model à la Blanchard (1985) to capture the age structure effect of the demographic shocks. It first demonstrates, conversely to previous works of the related literature that a decrease in the birth rate may lower the steady-state per capita stock of physical capital even if the aggregate labor supply is exogenous. It also demonstrates that the ageing of population influences the macro-economic impact of the environmental policy according to the cause of the ageing and the life-cycle earnings assumption. Thus, with decreasing age-earning profiles, a lower birth rate reduces the detrimental impact of the environmental policy on the steady-state per capita stock of physical capital for low values of this birth rate, while a reduction of the mortality rate reinforces the negative outcome of the environmental policy. When earnings profiles are independent of age, ageing always strengthens the negative impact of the environmental policy.Demography, Environment

Reconsidering The Impact of Environment on Long-Run Growth When Pollution Influences Health and Agents Have Finite-Lifetime

Using an overlapping generation model à la Blanchard (1985) with human capital accumulation, this article demonstrates that the influence of environment on optimal growth in the long-run may be explained by the detrimental effect of pollution on life expectancy. It also shows that, in such a case, greener preferences are growth- and welfare-improving even if the ability of the agents to learn is independent to pollution and utility is additively separable. Finally, it establishes that it is possible to implement a win-win environmental policy.Growth, Environment, Overlapping Generations, Human Capital, Health

Pollution, Health and Life Expectancy: How Environmental Policy Can Promote Growth

This article investigates the influence of environmental policy on growth assuming that the channel of transmission relies on the link between pollution, health and the survival probability, in an overlapping generations model à la Blanchard (1985) where growth is driven by a mechanism à la Romer (1986). We demonstrate that environmental policy has an ambiguous effect on growth in the steady-state when the detrimental impact of pollution on health and lifetime is taken into account: for low levels of taxation, environmental policy promotes growth while it is harmful to growth for high levels. Furthermore, we show that the environmental policy is more likely to promote growth (i.e. it stimulates growth for a wider range of environmental taxes) when public expenditures in health and/or the impact of pollution on health are important. Finally, using numerical simulations, we find that for the value of parameters chosen the environmental policy will be more likely to harm growth when agents smooth consumption over time.Growth, Environment, Overlapping generations

Abatement Technology and the Environment-Growth Nexus with Education

This article challenges the conventional result that a tighter environmental tax has no long-run effect on human capital accumulation in the presence of pollution arising from final output production. It demonstrates that the technology used in the abatement sector determines the existence and the direction of the growth-effect. A tighter environmental tax rises (respectively reduces) human capital accumulation in the presence of pollution arising from final production, if the abatement sector is relatively more intensive in human (resp. physical) capital than final sector. That result always holds for finite lifetime but for infinite lifetime it only holds when labor supply is endogenous. The transitional impact of a tighter environmental policy is also investigated.Growth, Environment, Overlapping Generations, Human Capital, Abatement

Environmental policy, education and growth: A reappraisal when lifetime is finite

This article demonstrates that when finite lifetime is introduced in a Lucas (1988) growth model where the source of pollution is physical capital, the environmental policy may enhance the growth rate of a market economy, while pollution does not influence educational activities, labor supply is not elastic and human capital does not enter the utility function. The result arises from the “generational turnover effect” due to finite lifetime. It remains valid under conditions when the education sector uses final output besides time to accumulate human capital. Nevertheless, it does no longer hold when the source of pollution is output. Furthermore, this article demonstrates that ageing reduces the positive influence of the environmental policy when growth is driven by human capital accumulation à la Lucas (1988) and lifetime is finite. It also confirms for finite lifetime the result found by Vellinga (1999) with a single representative agent: environmental care does not influence optimal growth when utility is additive and pollution does not influence the ability of agents to be educated.

Health-enhancing activities and the environment:How competition for resources make the environmental policy beneficial

In a two-period overlapping generations model, this paper demonstrates that the relationship between environmental taxation and economic activity (output level and output growth) becomes inverted-U shaped when the detrimental impact of pollution on health and the private decision of each working-age agent to improve her health are taken into account. In particular, a tighter environmental tax is more likely to promote (rather than to harm) output-level and -growth when health is very sensitive to pollution, the weight of health in preferences is high, the polluting capacity of the production technology is high and the rate of natural purification of pollutants is low. The inverted-U shaped relationship between environmental tax and economic activity is due to a positive effect arising from the competition for resources between the final output sector and the health-enhancing activities. This offsets the conventional detrimental “drag-down effect” for low values of the environmental tax. We also demonstrate that the link between environmental tax and lifetime welfare is inverted-U shaped as well. Finally, we investigate the social optimum and the determinants of the optimal environmental tax.