Environmental consciousness, economic growth, and macroeconomic instability

This paper develops an endogenous growth model to examine the linkages between environmental consciousness and economic growth. It is found that macroeconomic instability can arise in a simple AK-type growth model when the pollution externality is present only in the agent's utility function. It is also found that the impact of environmental consciousness on the economic growth rate is ambiguous. The economic systems (a decentralized versus centralized economy) and the ecological evolution (the specific pollution growth rate) are two crucial factors that determine the relationship between environmental consciousness and economic growth.