@techreport{Hoberg2011Irreversibility,
abstract = {We demonstrate the existence of an intergenerational equity-efficiency tradeoff in policy-making that aims at Pareto-efficiency across generations and sustainability, i.e. non-decreasing utility over time. Our model includes two salient characteristics of sustainability problems and policy: (i) temporal irreversibility, i.e. the inability to revise one's past actions; (ii) closed ignorance, i.e. future consequences of present actions in human-environment systems may be 'unknown unknowns'. If initially unforeseen sustainability problems become apparent and policy is enacted after irreversible actions were taken, policy-making faces a fundamental trade-off between intergenerational Pareto-efficiency and sustainability.},
address = {L\"{u}neburg},
author = {Nikolai Hoberg and Stefan Baumg\"{a}rtner},
copyright = {http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen},
keywords = {D3; H23; Q01; Q38; Q56; 330; climate change; closed ignorance; intergenerational equity-efficiency tradeoff; irreversibility; Pareto-efficiency; sustainability; Soziale Gerechtigkeit; Wirtschaftliche Effizienz; Generationenbeziehungen; Pareto-Optimum; Nachhaltigkeit; Theorie},
language = {eng},
number = {198},
publisher = {Univ., Inst. f\"{u}r Volkswirtschaftslehre},
title = {Irreversibility, ignorance, and the intergenerational equity-efficiency trade-off},
type = {University of L\"{u}neburg Working Paper Series in Economics},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10419/57153},
year = {2011}
}
