A group of agents disagree about the appropriate inter temporal preferences to use when exploiting a common productive resource. They thus delegate decision making to a social planner who allocates consumption efficiently across heterogeneous individuals and over time. We define `policy...

This paper provides a critical review of the literature on choosing social discount rates (SDRs) for public cost-benefit analysis. We discuss two dominant approaches, the first based on market prices, and the second based on intertemporal ethics. While both methods have attractive features,...

I review the complex welare economic issues that arise in environmental decision-making over very long periods of time, as in the case of climate change, biodiversity loss and nuclear waste disposal. I also consider the questions that have to be resolved in choosing a discount rate to apply to...