Optimal Population and Exhaustible Resource Constraints.

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 illustrat

SUBMITTER: Lawson N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5764548 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature