The efficient rate of return of a zero-coupon bond with maturity t is determined by our expectations about the mean (+), variance (-) and skewness (+) of the growth of aggregate consumption between 0 and t. The shape of the yield curve is thus determined by how these moments vary with t. We...

Weitzman (1998) showed that when future interest rates are uncertain, using the expected net present value implies a term structure of discount rates that is decreasing to the smallest possible interest rate. On the contrary, using the expected net future value criterion implies an increasing...

It is not immediately clear how to discount distant-future events, like climate change, when the distant-future discount rate itself is uncertain. The so-called Weitzman-Gollier puzzle is the fact that two seemingly symmetric and equally plausible ways of dealing with uncertain future discount...

We discuss the selection of the socially efficient discount rate for public investment projects that entail costs and benefits in the far distant future. We show that the discount rate should be a decreasing function of time horizon under some specific restrictions on the distribution of...

The efficient rate of return of a zero-coupon bond with maturity t is determined by our expectations about the mean (+), variance (-) and skewness (+) of the growth of aggregate consumption between 0 and t. The shape of the yield curve is thus determined by how these moments vary with t. We...