Growth in an OLG economy with a polluting non-renewable resource
Nicolas Clootens  1@  
1 : Laboratoire d'économie d'Orleans  (LEO)  -  Website
Université d'Orléans, CNRS : UMR7322
bat. A Rue de Blois - BP 6739 45067 ORLEANS CEDEX 2 -  France

In this paper, I develop the Ramsey program of an economy endowed with a

polluting non renewable resource. I show that if pollution is a flow resulting from

resource use or extraction, its adverse effects on current factor productivity provoke

a diminution of the resource use and a higher long run rate of growth. Also,

I show that an increase in resource dependence causes a lower long run growth

while abundance in resources increases the level of income. These findings tend

to confirm those that emerge from the recent resource curse literature. I then develop

successively two cases of competitive equilibrium and I analyze their ability

in decentralizing the Ramsey optimal balanced growth path. In the first case, the

resource is initially owned by the first generation of agents. Each period, elderly

agents sell their resource endowments to young households at an increased price.

In such a framework, I characterize the tax that allows to decentralize the Ramsey

allocation. In the second case, the management of the resource is given to an independent

trust fund. I characterize the optimal policy that should be followed by

this fund in order to decentralize the optimal equilibrium.


Online user: 1