The foreign property rule (FPR) requires that no more than 30% of the assets held in tax deferred retirement savings accounts be foreign property. The FPR is supposed to increase the value of the dollar and reduce its volatility and decrease the cost of capital and promote investment in Canada...

In an economy with a capital income tax distortion, the social discount rate (SDR) should reflect the social opportunity cost of capital rather than the social rate of time preference (consumption rate of interest) to ensure that public investments can produce Pareto improvements. The marginal...

Two comments in this issue of the Journal address our recent article in Volume 2, Issue 2. The fundamental issue with both comments is that they confuse the financial rate of return with the opportunity cost rate of return and therefore advocate for an inappropriate basis on which to calculate...

In order to be sensible about what discount rate to use one must be clear about its purpose.We suggest that its purpose is to help select those projects that will contribute more net benefits than some other discount rate. This approach, which is after all the foundation for benefit-cost...

The appropriate measure of the social discount rate is the social opportunity cost of borrowed funds (a weighted average of the rates of return on displaced investment, postponed consumption, and incremental foreign funding), which ensures that a proposed policy produces a potential Pareto...