This paper estimates returns to education using a dynamic model of educational choice that synthesizes approaches in the structural dynamic discrete choice literature with approaches used in the reduced form treatment effect literature. It is an empirically robust middle ground between the two...

We demonstrate the social efficiency of investing in high-quality early childhood education using newly collected data from the HighScope Perry Preschool Project. The data analyzed are the longest follow-up of any randomized early childhood education program. Annual observations of participant...

In welfare theory it is standard to pick the consumption stream that maximizes the welfare of the representative agent. We argue against this position, and show that a benevolent social planner will generally place a greater weight on future consumption than does the representative agent. Our...

This paper describes how three money's worth measures the benefit-to-tax ratio, the internal rate of return, and the net present value are calculated and used in analyses of social security reforms, including systems with privately managed individual accounts invested in equities. Declining...

This article studies the implications for the theory of deterrence of (a) the manner in" which individuals' disutility from imprisonment varies with the length of the imprisonment" term; and (b) discounting of the future disutility and future public costs of imprisonment. Two" questions are...

Most discussions on the social rate of discount have assumed that the economy under consideration is isolated from the rest of the world, and that there are no capital movements. This paper explicitly analyzes the determination of the social rate of discount in a small open developing economy....

There is probably no specific problem in tax analysis which has generated as much study and discussion among economists as the question of how to formulate "neutral" tax incentives for investment. Yet no consensus has been reached concerning the proper approach to take when adjusting taxes....

The choice of discount rate has a significant impact on net benefit estimates when costs today have benefits over long time horizons. Standard U.S. government practice for cost-benefit analysis is to bound such analysis using two alternative rates. These rates are meant to represent the rate of...

This article examines the economic basis for what is termed "rational discounting," which entails full recognition of policy effects over time and exponential discounting at a riskless rate of return. Policies often cannot be ranked unambiguously in terms of their present or future orientation....