On the fiscal strategies of escaping poverty-environment traps (and) towards sustainable growth

In: CESifo working paper series 4865

In: Fiscal policy, macroeconomics and growth

Abstract

An economy with clean and dirty intermediate inputs may fall into a trap characterized by low environmental quality and low life expectancy, while the others converge to opposite steady states. We propose new strategies towards sustainable growth. They include: (i) taxes (subsidies) imposed on the production of intermediate inputs to improve environmental quality, and therefore, life expectancy and capital accumulation, in order to guarantee that an economy locked in a poverty-environment trap can escape the stagnation; (ii) taxes (subsidies) imposed on the production of intermediate inputs, consumption, and capital income in order to decentralize the transition to the social optimum.