PPE lecture series: John Broome

Prof. John Broome (Emeritus White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy, Oxford) will give a lecture entitled 'Efficiency and future generations '.

Abstract:

A very important lesson from economics is that an externality (such as greenhouse gas) leads to economic inefficiency. This means that the externality can be corrected in a way that requires no sacrifice from anyone. However, this lesson is threatened by the non-identity effect on future generations - by the fact that policy to correct the externality will normally affect the identities of the people who live in the future. This paper considers how much of the very important lesson can be rescued.

A draft of the paper is on Oxford university's website.