Economic Analysis of Trade-Offs Between Justices

Abstract

We argue that economicsas the scientific method of analysing trade-offs-can be helpful (and may even be indispensable) for assessing the tradeoffs between intergenerational and intragenerational justice. Economic analysis can delineate the "opportunity set" of politics with respect to the two normative objectives of interand intragenerational justice, i.e. it can describe which outcomes are feasible in achieving the two objectives in a given context, and which are not. It can distinguish efficient from inefficient uses of instruments of justice. It can identify the "opportunity cost" of attaining one justice to a higher degree, in terms of less achievement of the other. We find that, under very general conditions, (1) efficiency in the use of instruments of justice implies that there is rivalry between the two justices and the opportunity cost of either justice is positive; (2) negative opportunity costs of achieving one justice exist if there is facilitation between the two justices, which can only happen if instruments of justice are used inefficiently; (3) opportunity costs of achieving one justice are zero if the two justices are independent of each other, which is the case in the interior of the opportunity set where instruments of justice are used inefficiently.

Value Pluralism, Trade-Offs and Efficiencies

“…Pattanaik and Xu 2012) or the relationship between intra-and intergenerational justice (e.g. Baumgärtner et al 2012). …”

The Justice Dimension of Sustainability: A Systematic and General Conceptual Framework

“…One possibility is to assign prima facie equal rank to the claims within the different relations, and then to look at the feasible combinations of attainment of these claims, i.e., to only look at trade-offs on the "production side" (cf. [152], for the distinction between the "value side" and the "production side", see also [153].). However, one might also wish to give normative reasons for decisions on trade-offs on the "value side", for example based on considerations of different moral standing (e.g., [149]), of different importance or urgency of the claims (e.g., [154]) or of different strength of the obligations [155] (see also Section 4.5).…”

“…[26]). As another example, instruments geared to fulfil intragenerational claims (e.g., to satisfy the basic needs of all current humans), may have positive or negative consequences on the environment, and therefore on claims within the relationship between humans and nature (see [130,152] for different possible relationships-rivalry, facilitation (win-win), or independence-in attaining inter-and intragenerational justice, and [26] for a critical view on the "win-win" hypothesis between poverty reduction and environmental protection).…”

“…One may assign prima facie equal rank to the claims within different relations (cf. [152]). One may decide on the relative importance and urgency of claims case-by-case depending on the specific grounds of justice relevant in the context (as hinted at in Section 4.2), or use procedural rules to resolve conflicts of claims (cf.…”

The trade-off between intra- and intergenerational equity in climate policy

“…Apart from Schelling, few economists have discussed the linkages between the two equity dimensions. However, recently, Baumgärtner et al (2012) provide a general discussion about the trade-offs between inter-and intragenerational justice in economic analysis, while Glotzbach and Baumgärtner (2012) analyze the relationship between these two aspects of justice in ecosystem management. Nonetheless, we are not aware of any studies of optimal climate policy that take both types of inequality aversion into account and investigate the impacts on emissions and investments in clean and dirty capital.…”