题目：Accounting for the income of non/renewable resources
概述：
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Non-renewable resources1 are widely extracted and used in today's global economy. On the one hand, the use of these resources generates huge cash flowsthat can be used for current consumption. On the other hand, the extraction of these resources implies less wealth of these natural resources in the future. To compensate for this wealth decrease, we have to accumulate other kinds of real wealth, like man-made capital, human capital, and renewable resources. The wealth accumulation can be achieved by activities of investments. Reasonable financial support for the investments should come from cash flows related to non-renewable resources. Hence, cash flows related to non-renewable resources should be divided for two basic purposes: current consumption and savings to support activities of investments. If the cash flows are used too much for current consumption, then we may su¤er by being impoverished in the future. If we save too much at current time, we may sacrifice our current well-being. The trade-off between current consumption and savings invokes a fundamental question: how much of the cash flows can we use for current consumption without impoverishing the future?
Following the literature line from Hicks (1946, Chapter 14) via Samuelson (1961) to Sefton and Weale (2006)2, in the first essay of this dissertation, Geir Asheim and I develop a theory of sectoral income. The theory can be applied to estimate income at a sectoral level. By this notion of sectoral income, we can answer the fundamental question concerning the division of the cash flows generated by non-renewable resources into consumption and savings. In particular, by applying the new theory in this dissertation, I provide a new method for estimating real income generated by non-renewable resources.
The new method has at least two advantages when compared with the wealth-based method, which is a commonly applied method in practical resource accounting. By the wealth-based method, sectoral income is associated with the interest on the sector's wealth, where the wealth is estimated as the present value of cash flows generated from the sector (see, e.g., Aslaksen et al., 1990, and Brekke, 1997, Sections II.C and IV). However, as pointed out by Hicks (1946, p. 174), income as interest on wealth can not serve as an indicator of prudent behavior if the real interest rate is expected to change3. An advantage of the new method is that it is still plausible even if real interest rate is expected to change over time. Another advantage is that the new method provides an alternative way to estimate net investments of a sector. This can be applied when information on sectoral capital stocks is not available as it may be difficult to observe, measure, or evaluate the change of capital stocks.
This dissertation consists of four essays. In the …rst essay, Geir Asheim and I propose the theory of sectoral income. In the second essay, I apply this theory to identify and classify the income generated by a non-renewable resource. In particular, sectoral net investments is shown to coincide with the shadow value of the change in capital stocks of the sector in a general framework. Then I illustrate the new theory by estimating sectoral income based on real data of the Norwegian petroleum sector in the third essay. As a first step to take into account real world uncertainty, I study the concept of national income in a stochastic setting in the last essay."