This workshop is intended for researchers and doctoral students in economics who are interested in resource and environmental economics. The webinar is led by a team of researchers composed of Geir B. Asheim (Oslo University), Hassan Benchekroun (McGill University), Sophie Bernard (Polytechnique Montréal), Etienne Billette de Villemeur (Université de Lille, UQAM), Robert Cairns (McGill University), Justin Leroux (HEC Montréal), and Charles Séguin (UQAM).

This workshop on natural resource and environmental economics will host Agnès Tomini, researcher at the Aix-Marseille School of Economics, and Arnaud Goussebaïle, researcher at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées.

→ This event will be in English.

• Agnès Tomini, researcher at the Aix-Marseille School of Economics
  Optimal Groundwater Management with Ecosystem Feedbacks: A labor value approach

Abstract

This paper develops a continuous-time optimal control model of integrated groundwater and ecosystem management. We depart from the standard literature on groundwater management by incorporating two strutural features. First, we consider an aquifer stock dynamically couples with a dependent ecosystem. Second, we introduce a value for the ecosystem inspired by the labor value defined by Ricardo (1831): the productive flow  that the aquifer generates for the ecosystem constitutes an unpriced service. 

This modeling has several interesting implications. This extension yields a three-component water pricing rule. Then two steady states emerge. We especially show that below an endogeneous minimum viability groundwater threshold, the ecosystem collapses in the long run. We then derive the conditions for a Skiba point and bifurcations.

• Arnaud Goussebaïle, researcher at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées 
  Political Social Cost of Carbon with Overlapping Generations

Abstract

This research examines how political constraints shape the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), a central concept guiding climate change mitigation policies by valuing the long-term damages from greenhouse gas emissions. Standard approaches to the SCC typically abstract from the political economy dimension of climate action, overlooking that mitigation decisions are made by currently living generations whose preferences and political influence shape collective outcomes. To address this gap, I develop overlapping generations models with micro-founded political processes. The analysis demonstrates that climate change mitigation under political constraints is generally inefficient. In particular, the more distant climate damages are in time, the more inefficiently they are discounted in the SCC. The framework also provides a novel rationale for taxing capital accumulation. Finally, the results show that mitigation ambition depends both on individuals’ altruism toward future generations and on the political influence of younger cohorts. Among these, altruism emerges as the more powerful driver of climate action.