About the Speaker:

Professor Yew-Kwang Ng, is Professor of Economics at Monash University (personal chair), was born in 1942 in Malaysia. He obtained a B. Com. from Nanyang University in 1966 and a Ph.D. from Sydney University. Before graduating from Nanyang University, he published a paper in Journal of Political Economy in 1965. He has been a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia since 1980. He recently received the Distinguished Fellow Award, 2007, Economic Society of Australia. He has worked in welfare economics, proposed mesoeconomics (a simplified general equilibrium analysis with both micro and macro elements) and welfare biology. He also collaborated with Xiaokai Yang on an inframarginal analysis of division of labour. He has published papers in leading journals in economics as well as in biology, mathematics, philosophy, psychology, and sociology and articles in the popular press. Books published include Mesoeconomics: A Micro-Macro Analysis (London: Wheatsheaf, 1986), Specialization and Economic Organization (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1993, with X. Yang), Increasing Returns and Economic Analysis, ed. (London: Macmillan, 1998, with Kenneth Arrow and Xiaokai Yang), Efficiency, Equality, and Public Policy (London: Macmillan, 2000), Welfare Economics: Towards a Complete Analysis, (London: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2004), Increasing Returns and Economic Efficiency, (London: Palgrave/Macmillan, forthcoming).

Abstract:

Recent discussion of climate change focuses on the trade-off between present and future consumption and hence correctly emphasizes the discount rate. However, an even more important problem has been largely neglected. This is the avoidance of catastrophes that may threaten the extinction of the human species. To analyze this, the comparison of marginal utility with total utility is needed. As happiness studies suggest low ratio of marginal to total utility and as scientific advances in brain stimulation and genetic engineering may dramatically increase future welfare, immediate and strong actions at environmental protection may be justified despite high discount rates.

Reservation:

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