#1468575 ANPEC - 2002 - Exame de Seleção Nacional (ANPEC)/"2003"

In addition, I contend here that these technology and price incentives responsible for much resource degradation in DRAs (1) depend more on technology than on price; (2) inasmuch as they depend on price, depend substantially on interest rates; and (3) in both these respects, are largely exogenous to agents in developing countries. Economic agents in DRAs are in the great majority of cases price takers for interest rates and other environmentally critical prices, and also product takers for the technology mix. All this suggests that, although the explicit or implicit policy recommendations appearing throughout this volume are reasonable enough, their impact on rates of resource degradation in DRAs will be small, without appropriate changes in policy by the interest rate “price makers” and the technology “product makers” in the developed world.

In the rank of the factors that, somehow, stimulate resource depletion in DRAs,

Item 2 - interest rates take precedence over the prices of environmental resources;