IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cai/rpvedb/rpve_514_0067.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sommes-nous trop égoïstes ou trop généreux envers les générations futures ?

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Gollier

Abstract

In our Western economies, the abnegation of past generations has contributed to improving current generations? welfare. What about now? Under the pressure of ecological catastrophists, is the current generation too burdened in favor of future generations or on the contrary, is it not burdened enough in view of the risks to be borne by our descendants? In this paper, I review the importance, for public decision making, of the choice of discount rate used to assess the present value of the flow of future damages (or benefits) linked to the current decisions. I then develop a classical model identifying the efficient social discount rate and analyze its determinants (pure rate of time preference, wealth effect and precautionary effect). Relying on empirical evidence and the historical trend of the economic growth rate, I discuss what is a reasonable value for the discount rate according to the term of the assessed project.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Gollier, 2012. "Sommes-nous trop égoïstes ou trop généreux envers les générations futures ?," Reflets et perspectives de la vie économique, De Boeck Université, vol. 0(4), pages 67-76.
  • Handle: RePEc:cai:rpvedb:rpve_514_0067
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=RPVE_514_0067
    Download Restriction: free

    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/revue-reflets-et-perspectives-de-la-vie-economique-2012-4-page-67.htm
    Download Restriction: free
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cai:rpvedb:rpve_514_0067. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cairn.info/revue-reflets-et-perspectives-de-la-vie-economique.htm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.