The authors model a consumer's efforts to reduce the discount on future utilities. Their analysis shows how wealth, mortality, addictions, uncertainty, and other variables affect the degree of time preference. In addition to working out many implications of the model, the authors discuss...

This comment discusses the importance of politics in understanding cost-benefit analysis. Economists frequently rely on a social planner model, under which cost-benefit analysis has a straightforward role, but a better model is the interest group competition model. In this model, cost-benefit...

This paper develops a model of the transmission of earnings, assets, and consumption from parents to descendants. The model assumes utility-maximizing parents who are concerned about the welfare of their children. The degree of intergenerational mobility is determined by the interaction of this...