The end of economic growth? Unintended consequences of a declining population
Charles I. Jones (Stanford University)
GPI Working Paper No. 13-2020 and published in the National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper series
In many models, economic growth is driven by people discovering new ideas. These models typically assume either a constant or growing population. However, in high income countries today, fertility is already below its replacement rate: women are having fewer than two children on average. It is a distinct possibility — highlighted in the recent book, Empty Planet — that global population will decline rather than stabilize in the long run. In standard models, this turns out to have profound implications: rather than continued exponential growth, living standards stagnate for a population that vanishes.
Other working papers
How should risk and ambiguity affect our charitable giving? – Lara Buchak (Princeton University)
Suppose we want to do the most good we can with a particular sum of money, but we cannot be certain of the consequences of different ways of making use of it. This paper explores how our attitudes towards risk and ambiguity bear on what we should do. It shows that risk-avoidance and ambiguity-aversion can each provide good reason to divide our money between various charitable organizations rather than to give it all to the most promising one…
The asymmetry, uncertainty, and the long term – Teruji Thomas (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University)
The Asymmetry is the view in population ethics that, while we ought to avoid creating additional bad lives, there is no requirement to create additional good ones. The question is how to embed this view in a complete normative theory, and in particular one that treats uncertainty in a plausible way. After reviewing…
Cassandra’s Curse: A second tragedy of the commons – Philippe Colo (ETH Zurich)
This paper studies why scientific forecasts regarding exceptional or rare events generally fail to trigger adequate public response. I consider a game of contribution to a public bad. Prior to the game, I assume contributors receive non-verifiable expert advice regarding uncertain damages. In addition, I assume that the expert cares only about social welfare. Under mild assumptions, I show that no information transmission can happen at equilibrium when the number of contributors…