Because of the time value of money (that is, a dollar today can be invested to yield more than a dollar tomorrow), a project's costs and benefits in different periods are not comparable. Therefore, a discount rate that will convert future sums into present values is used in cost-benefit...

Recent modelling of the costs and benefits of climate change has renewed debate regarding assumptions for the social discount rate in analysing the impacts of environmental change. Previous literature suggests two key factors influence estimates of the social discount rate: the rate of pure time...

The paper presents a theoretical framework for the appraisal of industrial projects. The analysis begins with the commercial evaluation followed by the economic evaluation from the national point of view. Notes are also made regarding indirect effects, the impact of the project on a town and...

Social discount rate (SDR) is a very crucial policy parameter in public project appraisals due to its resource allocation impacts. If this rate is too high, future generations will face excess financial burden since distant cash flows will become negligible. If this rate is too low, ineffective...

Governments play a central role in the allocation of capital and risk in the economy. Evaluating the cost to taxpayers of government investments requires an assumption about the government's cost of capital. Governments often take their borrowing rate to be their cost of capital, which...

This paper shows that, in an economy with an exogenous rate of return and a given capital income tax distortion, and with lump sum taxes as the marginal tax instrument, the SOC and MCF criteria both correctly identify all worthwhile projects if the criteria are properly applied. The equivalence...

Time and uncertainty constitute essential ingredients to many of the most challenging resource problems. With respect to the time dimension, agents are generally assumed to have a pure time preference as well as a preference for smoothing consumption over time. With respect to risk, agents are...