Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/107285 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 5143
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
The paper reexamines the welfare economics of intergenerational risk. Risk and its resolution over time are modeled as a decision tree: in each period, the consumption of the current one-period living generation is to be traded-off against uncertain benefits of future generations; as time passes, the planner observes the realized shocks and becomes more informed about the economy. The characterized class of criteria, named fair intergenerational utilitarian, measures social welfare in terms of the ratio between the allocated consumptions and an endogenously-determined equitable reference. This allows social preferences to (i) disentangle aversion to intergenerational inequality from aversion to risk, (ii) exhibit a preference for early resolution of risk, (iii) show different discounting formulas depending on the magnitude of risk and on the timing of its resolution, and (iv) avoid extreme policy recommendations in the presence of fat-tailed catastrophic events.
Subjects: 
intergenerational justice
timing of risk resolution
social ordering
discounting
JEL: 
D63
D81
H43
Q54
Q56
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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