We analyze the role of "the" utility discount rate and its implications to generation-specific and societal altruism and egoism, respectively, in a neoclassical framework. It is worked out clearly, that two different utility discount rates have to be distinguished: An (inverse)...

Specialized theoretical and empirical research should in principle be embedded in a unified framework that identifies the relevant interactions among different phenomena, enables an appropriate matching of policy instruments to objectives, and grounds normative analysis in individuals' utilities...

The social discount rate used in cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is an interest rate applied to benefits and costs that are expected to occur in the future in order to convert them into a present value. This conversion is done to ascertain what those benefits and costs are worth today. The social...

A social time preference methodology derived from Feldstein (1965) is applied to calculate social discount rates across 167 countries and across time from 2005-2050 for a country case (Brazil). This attempt seeks to compute comparable figures from a homogeneous dataset and provides a...

Public sector projects in Iran are inefficiently carried out for reasons of mismanagement and poor prioritization. This problem may arise from the lack of a generally accepted social discount rate for project appraisal. The value of the social discount rate can have implications for resource...

This paper explains the conceptual basis for the social rate of time preference (STP) and why it is the appropriate method of choosing the social discount rate (SDR), compared to the most prominent alternative method: the social opportunity cost of capital (SOC). We recommend that for...

In benefit-cost analysis, we accept that a future dollar is worth something less than a dollar today. However, we do not have a clear method to apply social discounting in retrospective benefit-cost analysis. In this note, we will first develop the case for using historical borrowing as the...

A long-standing challenge for welfare economics is to develop welfare criteria that can be applied to allocations with different population levels. Such a criterion is essential to resolve the optimal population problem, i.e., the tradeoff between population size and the welfare of each person...

This paper reviews recent research on the aggregation of heterogeneous time preferences. Main results are illustrated in simple Ramsey models with two or three agents who differ in their discount factors. We employ an intertemporal view on these models and argue that preferences of a decision...

The public at large, many policymakers, and a number of economists hold views of social welfare that are non-welfarist, which is to say that some importance is attached to factors other than individuals' utilities. We show, however, that any non-welfarist method of policy assessment violates the...