A standard optimal investment model can be used to analyse an individual"s decision to accumulate social capital. We analyse six facts that support the predictions of this individual--based approach: (1) social capital first rises and then falls with age, (2) social capital declines with...

The neoclassical theory of project evaluation is based on models in which agents discount the future at a constant exponential rate. But there is strong empirical evidence that people discount the future hyperbolically, applying larger annual discount rates to near-term returns than to returns...