A history of cost-benefit procedures for water projects is presented, and the current discount rate controversy is reviewed. It is recommended that the discount rate should be based on estimates of the real opportunity cost of public funds, not nominal financial yields on long-term government...

This article makes an analytical comparison between simple, compound and continuous interest discount factors. It studies the equivalency relations between the three discount factors. An analysis is performed for a limited time period and of normal economy interest rates. It makes use of the...

Discount rate variation is the central organizing question of current asset pricing research. I survey facts, theories and applications. We thought returns were uncorrelated over time, so variation in price-dividend ratios was due to variation in expected cashflows. Now it seems all...

This paper argues that the price-dividend ratio variability is explained in a large proportion by shocks affecting the subjective distribution of capital gain expectations: sentimental discount rate shocks affecting average beliefs explain at least 30\% and disagreement shocks up to 20\% of the...