As the most important driver of long-term project evaluation, from climate change policy to infrastructure investments, the social discount rate (SDR) has been subject to heated debate among economists. To uncover the extent and sources of disagreement, we report the results of a survey of over...

We study how the distribution of income among members of society, and income inequality in particular, affects social willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental public goods. We find that social WTP for environmental goods increases with mean income, and decreases (increases) with income...

This paper examines implications of limits to substitution for estimating substitutability between ecosystem services and manufactured goods and for social discounting. Based on a model that accounts for a subsistence requirement in the consumption of ecosystem services, we provide empirical...

Understanding what influences the value of nature is crucial for informing environmental policy. From a sustainability perspective, economic valuation should not only seek to determine willingness to pay for environmental goods to devise an efficient allocation of scarce resources, but should...

We study how the scarcity of non-market goods, such as environmental amenities, affects the economic appraisal of climate policy. To this end, we perform a comprehensive analysis of the change in relative prices of non-market goods in the widespread climate-economy model DICE. We show that DICE...

We study how income inequality affects the social value of a dynamic public good, such as natural capital. Our theory shows that both intra- and intertemporal inequality affect the social value of public natural capital. The direction and size of the effects are driven by the degree of...

We study the variation of global and unilateral carbon price recommendations and their determinants. To this end, we provide survey evidence on carbon pricing from more than 400 experts across almost 40 countries. We quantify the extent of (dis-)agreement and reveal that a majority of experts...

Discounting future costs and benefits is a crucial yet contentious practice in the appraisal of long-term public projects with environmental consequences. The standard approach typically neglects that ecosystem services are not easily substitutable with manufactured goods and often exhibit...

The estimated values to society from long-term public projects, including climate change mitigation and infrastructure construction, are highly sensitive to the social discount rate (SDR) employed. Governmental guidance on social discounting has predominantly been based on input from expert...

How the valuation of environmental goods is related to income is a key question for economics, but the role of income inequality is often neglected. We study how income inequality affects the international transfer of the estimated value of environmental goods from a study to a policy site - a...