Climate policies have stochastic consequences that involve a great number of generations. This calls for evaluating social risk (what kind of societies will future people be born into) rather than individual risk (what will happen to people during their own lifetimes). As a response we propose...

This paper presents an infinite-horizon version of intergenerational utilitarianism that is both satisfactorily complete and consistent. By studying discounted utilitarianism as the discount factor tends to one, we obtain a welfare criterion --- limit-discounted utilitarianism --- that combines...

The paper reexamines the welfare economics of intergenerational risk. Risk and its resolution over time are modeled as a decision tree: in each period, the consumption of the current one-period living generation is to be traded-off against uncertain benefits of future generations; as time...

Konventionelle Kosten-Nutzen-Analysen beziehen sich auf eher kurzfristige staatliche Vorhaben. Betroffen von den Kosten und Nutzen sind hauptsächlich die lebenden Generationen. Die Diskontierung geht von deren Zeitpräferenzen aus. Die Verhältnisse sind bei sehr langfristigen Projekten oder...

Discounted utilitarianism and the Ramsey equation prevail in the debate on the discount rate on consumption. The utility discount rate is assumed to be constant and to reflect either the uncertainty about the existence of future generations or a pure preference for the present. The authors...

This paper analyses the choice of an inter-generational discount rate as well as a method for inter-generational discounting. It is shown that the pure time preference rate is irrelevant for inter-generational comparisons. However, the application of the growth time preference rate - with...