The Economics of Green Constitutions

Abstract

Over the last decades, more and more countries have integrated environmental protection into their constitution. In this article, we argue that a simple economic model can explain why some countries have adopted the legal innovation of constitutional environmental protection, while others have not. Environmental protection can be thought of as an investment that only pays off over the long term, and may even imply intergenerational redistribution to the advantage of future generations. Moreover, the adoption of constitutional environmental protection leads to the provision of public goods, which redistributes resources among all members of a society. Taken together, these arguments imply that democratic states with a culture that favors future-oriented behavior are more likely to entrench environmental protection in their constitution. We study the adoption of constitutional environmental protection in a panel dataset for 122 countries using semi-parametric survival analysis techniques. Our results suggest that future-oriented preferences are a robust determinant of a country’s propensity to adopt a green constitution. Political institutions are less important and do not exert a statistically significant effect.

The effect of culture on energy efficient vehicle ownership

“…Schumacher (2015) proposes that high wealth levels allow societies to develop an environmental culture. Imhof et al (2016) suggest that countries with a culture that favours future oriented behaviour are more likely to include environmental protection in their constitution. However, both theories do not seem to apply for the case of Switzerland: wealth levels were historically lower in the French part of Switzerland and the German-speaking regions are likely to have a more future oriented culture (Chen, 2013), this would predict a lower concern for the environment in French speaking regions, however we observe the contrary.…”

Universal time preference

“…In all of these cases, time preferences should play a predictive role: there is always a tradeoff between short-term costs (decreasing spending, driving less, studying longer, etc.) versus a long-term benefit (e.g., less debt, clean environment and less global warming, better job perspectives) [ 20 , 22 – 24 ]. However, we should note that reverse causality is likely as well.…”

Universal Time Preference

“…In all of these cases, time preferences should play a predictive role: there is always a tradeoff between short-term costs (decreasing spending, driving less, studying longer, etc.) versus a long-term benefit (e.g., less debt, clean environment and less global warming, better job perspectives) [20,[22][23][24]. However, we should note that reverse causality is likely as well.…”

“…measurements of time preferences [6,15,16,[18][19][20][21]. Details of the estimation and data sources are provided in the methods section:…”