| Title |
Optimal population and exhaustible resource constraints
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Journal of Population Economics, September 2017
|
| DOI | 10.1007/s00148-017-0665-9 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Nicholas Lawson, Dean Spears |
| Abstract |
A large literature considers the optimal size and growth rate of the human population, trading off the utility value of additional people with the costs of a larger population. In this literature, an important parameter is the social weight placed on population size; a standard result is that a planner with a larger weight on population chooses larger population levels and growth rates. We demonstrate that this result is conditionally overturned when an exhaustible resource constraint is introduced: if the discount rate is small enough, the optimal population today decreases with the welfare weight on population size. That is, a more total-utilitarian social planner could prefer a smaller population today than a more average-utilitarian social planner. We also present a numerical illustration applied to the case of climate change, where we show that under plausible real-world parameter values, our result matters for the direction and magnitude of optimal population policy. |
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Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 1 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 1 | 100% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 22 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 22 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Master | 6 | 27% |
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 5 | 23% |
| Researcher | 3 | 14% |
| Professor | 1 | 5% |
| Other | 1 | 5% |
| Other | 1 | 5% |
| Unknown | 5 | 23% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Social Sciences | 10 | 45% |
| Economics, Econometrics and Finance | 3 | 14% |
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 1 | 5% |
| Business, Management and Accounting | 1 | 5% |
| Computer Science | 1 | 5% |
| Other | 0 | 0% |
| Unknown | 6 | 27% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 15 May 2019.
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#19,139,867
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Outputs from Journal of Population Economics
#696
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#244,398
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Outputs of similar age from Journal of Population Economics
#10
of 11 outputs
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