Endogenous Growth, Green Innovation and GDP Deceleration in a World with Polluting Production Inputs

Abstract

We study economic growth and pollution control in a model with endogenous rate and direction of technical change. Economic growth (growth of real GDP) results from growth in the quantity and productivity of polluting intermediates. Pollution can be controlled by reducing the pollution intensity of a given quantity through costly research (green innovation) and by reducing the share of polluting intermediate quantity in GDP. Without clean substitutes, saving on polluting inputs implies that the rate of GDP growth remains below productivity growth (deceleration). While neither green innovation nor deceleration is chosen under laissez-faire, both contribute to long-run optimal pollution control for reasonable parameter values. In our baseline-model, there are no exhaustible resources. In an extension, we analyze the e ects of resource-scarcity on the environment, long-run growth and the direction of technical change