IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aare10/59156.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Decomposing the social discount rate

Author

Listed:
  • Scarborough, Helen

Abstract

Recent modelling of the costs and benefits of climate change has renewed debate surrounding assumptions regarding the social discount rate in analysing the impacts of environmental change. Previous literature segments the social discount rate into being influenced by two key factors; the rate of pure time preference and the elasticity of marginal utility of future consumption. These components of the social discount rate reinforce the linkages between the choice of social discount rate and intergenerational distribution. In an extension of previous work by the author on intergenerational distributional preferences, this paper discusses the relationship between intergenerational equity and the social discount rate. The work has significant policy implications given the sensitivity of Cost Benefit Analysis outcomes to assumptions regarding the social discount rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Scarborough, Helen, 2010. "Decomposing the social discount rate," 2010 Conference (54th), February 10-12, 2010, Adelaide, Australia 59156, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aare10:59156
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.59156
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/59156/files/Scarborough_%20Helen.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.59156?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Garnaut,Ross, 2008. "The Garnaut Climate Change Review," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521744447, October.
    2. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801, October.
    3. Yew-Kwang Ng & Lok Sang Ho (ed.), 2006. "Happiness and Public Policy," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-0-230-28802-7, December.
    4. W. Viscusi & Joel Huber & Jason Bell, 2008. "Estimating discount rates for environmental quality from utility-based choice experiments," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 199-220, December.
    5. Weitzman, Martin L., 1998. "Why the Far-Distant Future Should Be Discounted at Its Lowest Possible Rate," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 201-208, November.
    6. Office of Health Economics, 2007. "The Economics of Health Care," For School 001490, Office of Health Economics.
    7. David Pearce, 1999. "Economics and Environment," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 354.
    8. Martin L. Weitzman, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 703-724, September.
    9. A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), 2000. "Handbook of Health Economics," Handbook of Health Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Courard-Hauri, David & Klimas, Christie A. & Parrish, Conor, 2020. "An analysis of the long-term social discount rate and the valuation of large environmental losses using non-monetary tradeoffs," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    2. Michalis Skourtos & Dimitris Damigos & Areti Kontogianni & Christos Tourkolias & Alistair Hunt, 2019. "Embedding Preference Uncertainty for Environmental Amenities in Climate Change Economic Assessments: A “Random” Step Forward," Economies, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-22, October.
    3. Kaushal, Kevin R. & Navrud, Ståle, 2018. "Global Biodiversity Costs of Climate Change. Improving the damage assessment of species loss in Integrated Assessment Models," Working Paper Series 4-2018, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, School of Economics and Business.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Scarborough, Helen, 2011. "Intergenerational equity and the social discount rate," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 55(2), pages 1-14.
    2. Therese Grijalva & Jayson Lusk & W. Shaw, 2014. "Discounting the Distant Future: An Experimental Investigation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 59(1), pages 39-63, September.
    3. Min Gong & David Krantz & Elke Weber, 2014. "Why Chinese discount future financial and environmental gains but not losses more than Americans," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 103-124, October.
    4. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.
    5. Geoffrey Heal, 2008. "Climate Economics: A Meta-Review and Some Suggestions," NBER Working Papers 13927, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Fleurbaey, Marc & Zuber, Stéphane, 2015. "Discounting, risk and inequality: A general approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 34-49.
    7. Nicole El Karoui & Mohamed Mrad & Caroline Hillairet, 2014. "Ramsey Rule with Progressive utility and Long Term Affine Yields Curves," Working Papers hal-00974831, HAL.
    8. Aline Chiabai & Ibon Galarraga & Anil Markandya & Unai Pascual, 2013. "The Equivalency Principle for Discounting the Value of Natural Assets: An Application to an Investment Project in the Basque Coast," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 56(4), pages 535-550, December.
    9. Mason, Charles F. & Polasky, Stephen & Tarui, Nori, 2017. "Cooperation on climate-change mitigation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 43-55.
    10. Christian Traeger, 2014. "Why uncertainty matters: discounting under intertemporal risk aversion and ambiguity," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(3), pages 627-664, August.
    11. Kollenberg, Sascha & Taschini, Luca, 2016. "Emissions trading systems with cap adjustments," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 20-36.
    12. Nicole El Karoui & Caroline Hillairet & Mohamed Mrad, 2022. "Ramsey rule with forward/backward utility for long-term yield curves modeling," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 45(1), pages 375-414, June.
    13. Rick Van der Ploeg & Bas Jacobs, 2010. "Precautionary Climate Change Policies And Optimal Redistribution," OxCarre Working Papers 049, Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, University of Oxford.
    14. Eric Fesselmeyer & Haoming Liu & Alberto Salvo, 2022. "Declining discount rates in Singapore's market for privately developed apartments," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(2), pages 330-350, March.
    15. Stephen Howes, 2012. "Sustaining Growth and Mitigating Climate Change: Are the Costs of Mitigation Underestimated?," Chapters, in: Chin Hee Hahn & Sang-Hyop Lee & Kyoung-Soo Yoon (ed.), Responding to Climate Change, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Ram Fishman, 2019. "Heterogeneous Patience, Bargaining Power and Investment in Future Public Goods," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 73(4), pages 1101-1107, August.
    17. Dongmei Guo & Shouyang Wang & Lin Zhao, 2020. "More Stringent Cap or Higher Penalty Fee? Dealing with Procrastination in Environmental Protection," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 21(1), pages 41-69, May.
    18. Hepburn, Cameron & Koundouri, Phoebe & Panopoulou, Ekaterini & Pantelidis, Theologos, 2009. "Social discounting under uncertainty: A cross-country comparison," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 140-150, March.
    19. Roger Fouquet, 2012. "Economics of Energy and Climate Change: Origins, Developments and Growth," Working Papers 2012-08, BC3.
    20. Michael D. Bauer & Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2023. "The Rising Cost of Climate Change: Evidence from the Bond Market," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(5), pages 1255-1270, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Environmental Economics and Policy;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ags:aare10:59156. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaresea.html .

    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.