Essays in sustainable development [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Laura Gariup

Laura Gariup

Informations

• Publié par: ludwig-maximilians-universitat_munchen
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 14
• Langue: English

Extrait

Essays in Sustainable Development
Inaugural-Dissertation
zur Erlangung des Grades Doctor oeconomiae publicae (Dr.oec.publ.)
an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat¨ Munc¨ hen
2006
vorgelegt von
Laura Gariup
Referent: Professor Dr. Peter Egger
Korreferent: Sven Rady, Ph.D.
Promotionsabschlussberatung: 07 Februar 2007Acknowledgment
To my supervisor Professor Peter Egger I express my deepest gratitude for all the
wonderfulsupport,professionalaswellashuman,hegavemeandbecauseheleftme
the freedom in continuing to do research on a topic which I am extremely interested
in.
If these four difficult years can be crowned with the present dissertation, that
is also because Professor Sven Rady, from the beginning to the end, has always
encouraged and helped me and he has given me precious teachings which I will
never forget. For all of that I thank him.
I want to thank Professor Marco Runkel because he was one of the first persons
who stimulated me to persevere in my work and found always time to listen to my
research ideas. It is also especially thanks to him that I had such an enrichment and
wonderful experience as that of being a teaching assistant at the chair of Professor
Bernd Huber.
For another unforgettable experience I thank Professor Sjak Smulders who made
my three months stay at the Economic Department of Tilburg University possible.
I extremely benefited from his comments and the stimulating environment.
For all his engagement I am very grateful to Professor Gerhard Illing.
The mathematical part of chapter 4 is based upon derivations in work by Pro-
fessor Georg Schluc¨ htermann. I gratefully acknowledge his assistance with the ex-
position and his kind help in preparing the draft.
For the precious help with all the administrative questions along these years I
am thankful to Ingeborg Buchmayr and to Dirk Roesing with all the technical ones.
IAlessia dell’Acqua, Rossella Bargiacchi, Michela Coppola, Frauke Eckermann,
Federico Flora, Anita Hofmann, Friederike Koehler, Tobias Kronenberg, Karolina
Leib, Corrado di Maria, Nadine Riedel, Don Rinaldo, Tiziana Rucli, Marco Sahm,
MarcoSalcoacci, ChiaradiTaranto, Iwanttothankforthehelpandallthepositive
energy they gave me during this Munich experience.
To my wonderful family, my mum, my dad - who unfortunately left us from this
world last year - and my brother: thank you for all.
To my beloved husband my special thanks. You have always encouraged, moti-
vated, supported and helped me. You are a special and wonderful person.
IIContents
I Concepts 1
1 Introduction 2
1.1 Purpose and Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 The sustainability issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Environmental facts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 Appendix 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2 Economy and environment joined together 11
2.1 What an ideal model should encompass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 The basic model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3 Hotelling rule for renewable resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
II Applications 18
3 Role of the regenerative capacity of nature in the sustainability
debate: a Schumpeterian endogenous growth model 19
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.2 The ecological part of a growth model: the regeneration function . . . 21
3.3 The Schumpeterian growth approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.4 The Schumpeterian approach to the environmental quality with en-
dogenous regenerative capacity of the environment . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.5 Endogenous regenerative capacity of the environment and the stock
pollution function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
III3.6 Conclusion: what the new environmental specifications tell us . . . . 28
3.7 Appendix 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.7.1 Optimal control problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.7.2 Derivation of growth rates in a balanced steady state . . . . . 31
3.8 Appendix 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.8.1 Optimal control problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.8.2 Derivation of growth rates in a balanced steady state . . . . . 35
4 Biodiversity loss and stochastic technological processes: a sustain-
able growth analysis 39
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.2 Structure of the model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.3 The new Hotelling Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.4 The optimal paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.5 The optimal paths analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.7 Appendix 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.8 Appendix 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.9 Appendix 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5 Nature as a knowledge reservoir: a non-scale endogenous growth
model with relaxation of knife edge assumptions 72
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.2 The scale effects and knife edge debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.3 Nature as a knowledge reservoir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
5.4 Natural knowledge as a prerequisite for sustained growth . . . . . . . 79
5.4.1 Model structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.4.2 Dynamics of technology and natural knowledge . . . . . . . . 82
5.5 The threat from what gets lost: pollution damages on nature as a
knowledge reservoir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
IV5.6 How technological progress influences a knife edge assumption . . . . 87
5.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Bibliography 91
VPart I
Concepts
1Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Purpose and Structure
The present work is the result of my interest in two themes: poverty and environ-
ment. Scarcity, which is in fact the essential economic problem in all the history
of economic thought, is inevitably related to the finiteness of the natural environ-
ment. And it is not a coincidence that ”eco”-nomics and ”eco”-logy have the same
Greek root ”oikos”, meaning household. After World War II, economic growth is
considered as the ultimate remedy for poverty, but it is only since the 1990s that
the notions of natural resources and environmental economics systematically enter
the theory of economic growth to model sustainable development, which recognizes
the value of the environmental services for the growth process.
The dissertation is organized in two parts. The first one comprises the present
chapter1”Introduction”andchapter2”Economyandenvironmentjoinedtogether”
and provides an overview of key notions for a better understanding of the second
part, which presents new theoretical applications. Explicitly the second part ana-
lyzesdifferentaspectsofthesustainabilityproblemthatarenotalreadycapturedby
the existing growth literature: in chapter 3, the non-constancy of the regenerative
capacityoftheenvironment; inchapter4, theconnectionbetweenuseanddepletion
of renewable resources to address the problem of biodiversity loss and in chapter 5
2Introduction 3
the role of nature as a knowledge reservoir.
The motivation for chaper 3 ”Role of the regenerative capacity of nature in the
sustainability debate: a Schumpeterian endogenous growth model” is the study of
the waste sink and life support services. In the construction of a model of economic
growth, the analysis of these environmental services requires the insertion of the re-
generativecapacityofnatureintheregenerationfunctionoftheenvironment, which
is captured by an environmental quality indicator reflecting all ecosystems and their
interactions. Buttheregenerativecapacityofnatureisdifferentfromjusttheregen-
erative capacity of biological populations because it includes also the regenerative
ability of particular types of renewable resources, namely water, soil, atmosphere,
to maintain the quality necessary for human life (assimilation of pollutants). There-
fore it is not constant, as assumed in the model of Aghion and Howitt (1998), but
it depends on the impact of pollution on the environment.
Therecentlygrowinginterestintheproblemofbiodiversitylossisthemotivation
forchapter4”Biodiversitylossandstochastictechnologicalprocesses: asustainable
growth analysis”. In contrast to the greenhouse effect which is well studied in the
economic growth literature, to address the problem of biodiversity loss we need
a new methodological approach. Namely to combine the ideas of the standard
environmental quality literature of economic growth, which investigates pollution
awareness, with the ”corn-eating” framework, used in the analysis of optimal use of
renewable resources. So, it is possible to investigate the joint effect of harvesting
and induced pollution degradation on renewable resources. In addition to that,
the model extends the le