Growth, intergenerational welfare, and environmental policies in an overlapping generations economy

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of the environmental tax on long-run growth and intergenerational welfare in a discrete-time overlapping generations (OLG) model. We highlight that the role regarding how the environmental tax revenues are distributed between the young or old generations has important implications for the growth and welfare effects. Our results indicate that raising the environmental tax can exert different effects on the environmental utility of the existing young and old generations, implying an intergenerational welfare conflict of the environmental policy. However, if tax revenues are distributed appropriately, our numerical simulation shows that it is possible for a higher environmental tax to improve the welfare of all generations.