Roads to prosperity without environmental poverty: The role of impatience

This paper advances the hypothesis that impatience negatively depends on environmental quality and aims to explain why some countries stagnate in an ‘environmental and economic poverty trap’. For low levels of environmental quality, advancements in productivity lead impatient agents to direct income increases to consumption (rather than savings), depleting further the environment. Given that productivity increases do not help such economies to escape the trap (contrary to perceived notions), policies should focus on the implementation of behavioral changes.