IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mil/wpdepa/2009-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social discount rates and welfare weights for public investment decisions under budgetary restrictions – the case of Cyprus

Author

Listed:
  • David EVANS
  • Erhun KULA

Abstract

This paper focuses on the estimation of key welfare parameters for incorporation into social cost-benefit analysis with special reference to Cyprus and its unique regional problems. In particular, the theory and application of social discount rates and regional welfare weights are considered from the perspective of the European Commission as both supra-national planner and provider of major funding for investment in the EU-12 area. The aim is to provide answers to three main questions. Firstly, should different discount rates be applied in the appraisal of projects impacting on the Turkish and Greek regions of the island? Second, if different discount rates apply, then what approach should be taken in the discounting of costs and benefits for projects impacting on the entire island? Finally, what is the best method to estimate regional welfare weights for Cyprus and how should these weights be applied in social cost-benefit analysis in order to take proper account of the considerably lower average standard of living in North Cyprus. This particular case-study serves to highlight a practical procedure, with suitable theoretical underpinnings, for the calculation and incorporation of regional welfare weights in social CBA more generally and especially with regard to Europe.

Suggested Citation

  • David EVANS & Erhun KULA, 2009. "Social discount rates and welfare weights for public investment decisions under budgetary restrictions – the case of Cyprus," Departmental Working Papers 2009-19, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    • Handle: RePEc:mil:wpdepa:2009-19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wp.demm.unimi.it/files/wp/2009/DEMM-2009_019wp.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Massimo Florio, 2006. "Cost-benefit analysis and the European union cohesion fund: On the social cost of capital and labour," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(2), pages 211-224.
    2. Richard Blundell & Martin Browning & Costas Meghir, 1994. "Consumer Demand and the Life-Cycle Allocation of Household Expenditures," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(1), pages 57-80.
    3. Haluk Sezer, 2006. "Regional welfare weights for Turkey," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 33(5), pages 357-368, November.
    4. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801.
    5. Erhun Kula, 2004. "Estimation of a Social Rate of Interest for India," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 91-99, March.
    6. Neal Blue, E. & Tweeten, Luther, 1997. "The estimation of marginal utility of income for application to agricultural policy analysis," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 155-169, August.
    7. Michael Spackman, 2004. "Time discounting and of the cost of capital in government," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 25(4), pages 467-518, December.
    8. David J. Evans, 2005. "The elasticity of marginal utility of consumption: estimates for 20 OECD countries," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 26(2), pages 197-224, June.
    9. Martin L. Weitzman, 2001. "Gamma Discounting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 260-271, March.
    10. Gollier, Christian, 2002. "Discounting an uncertain future," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 149-166, August.
    11. Kula, E., 2002. "Regional Welfare Weights in Investment Appraisal - The Case of India," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 32(1), pages 1-16.
    12. Dreze, Jean & Stern, Nicholas, 1987. "The theory of cost-benefit analysis," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 14, pages 909-989, Elsevier.
    13. John Creedy & Ross Guest, 2008. "Discounting and the Time Preference Rate," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 84(264), pages 109-127, March.
    14. John Creedy, 2008. "A note on discounting and the social time preference rate," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 11(3), pages 249-255.
    15. David J. Evans & Haluk Sezer, 2005. "Social discount rates for member countries of the European Union," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 32(1), pages 47-59, January.
    16. David Evans, 2004. "The elevated status of the elasticity of marginal utility of consumption," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(7), pages 443-447.
    17. Dreze, Jean & Stern, Nicholas, 1990. "Policy reform, shadow prices, and market prices," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 1-45, June.
    18. D. Evans & E. Kula & H. Sezer, 2005. "Regional welfare weights for the UK: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(7), pages 923-937.
    19. 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.
    20. David Evans & Haluk Sezer, 2002. "A time preference measure of the social discount rate for the UK," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(15), pages 1925-1934.
    21. Erhun Kula, 1984. "Derivation of Social Time Preference Rates for the United States and Canada," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(4), pages 873-882.
    22. David Evans, 2008. "The marginal social valuation of income for the UK," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 35(1), pages 26-43, January.
    23. 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.
    24. E. Neal Blue & Luther Tweeten, 1997. "The estimation of marginal utility of income for application to agricultural policy analysis," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 16(3), pages 155-169, August.
    25. David Evans & Haluk Sezer, 2004. "Social discount rates for six major countries," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(9), pages 557-560.
    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. Antonio Nesticò & Gabriella Maselli & Patrizia Ghisellini & Sergio Ulgiati, 2023. "A Dual Probabilistic Discounting Approach to Assess Economic and Environmental Impacts," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 85(1), pages 239-265, May.

    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. Mareike Schad & Jürgen John, 2012. "Towards a social discount rate for the economic evaluation of health technologies in Germany: an exploratory analysis," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 13(2), pages 127-144, April.
    2. Massimo Florio & Emanuela Sirtori, 2013. "The social cost of capital: recent estimates for the EU countries," Working Papers 201303, CSIL Centre for Industrial Studies.
    3. David J. EVANS, 2006. "Social discount rates for the European Union," Departmental Working Papers 2006-20, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    4. Ben Groom & David Maddison Pr., 2019. "New Estimates of the Elasticity of Marginal Utility for the UK," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(4), pages 1155-1182, April.
    5. Akbulut, Hale & Seçilmiş, Erdem, 2019. "Estimation of a social discount rate for Turkey," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 78-85.
    6. Moore, Mark A. & Boardman, Anthony E. & Vining, Aidan R., 2013. "More appropriate discounting: the rate of social time preference and the value of the social discount rate," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(1), pages 1-16, March.
    7. Rafał Buła & Monika Foltyn-Zarychta, 2022. "Declining Discount Rates for Energy Policy Investments in CEE EU Member Countries," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(1), pages 1-27, December.
    8. Jan Kubíček & Leoš Vítek, 2010. "Hodnocení veřejných projektů z hlediska společenské míry diskontace [Evaluation of Public Projects from the Viewpoint of Social Rate of Discount]," Politická ekonomie, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2010(3), pages 291-304.
    9. Michael Spackman, 2011. "Government discounting controversies: the valuation of social time preference," GRI Working Papers 68, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    10. Erhun KULA, 2006. "Regional welfare weights," Departmental Working Papers 2006-32, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    11. 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.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. Monika Foltyn-Zarychta & Rafał Buła & Krystian Pera, 2021. "Discounting for Energy Transition Policies—Estimation of the Social Discount Rate for Poland," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-21, January.
    15. Cameron Hepburn & Greer Gosnell, 2014. "Evaluating impacts in the distant future: cost–benefit analysis, discounting and the alternatives," Chapters, in: Giles Atkinson & Simon Dietz & Eric Neumayer & Matthew Agarwala (ed.), Handbook of Sustainable Development, chapter 9, pages 140-159, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Jouini, Elyès & Marin, Jean-Michel & Napp, Clotilde, 2010. "Discounting and divergence of opinion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 830-859, March.
    17. Fesselmeyer, Eric & Liu, Haoming & Salvo, Alberto, 2016. "How Do Households Discount over Centuries? Evidence from Singapore's Private Housing Market," IZA Discussion Papers 9862, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Birol, Ekin & Koundouri, Phoebe & Kountouris, Yiannis, 2010. "Assessing the economic viability of alternative water resources in water-scarce regions: Combining economic valuation, cost-benefit analysis and discounting," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(4), pages 839-847, February.
    19. Ferda Halicioglu & Cevat Karatas, 2013. "A social discount rate for Turkey," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 1085-1091, February.
    20. Christian Gollier & Phoebe Koundouri & Theologos Pantelidis, 2008. "Declining discount rates: Economic justifications and implications for long-run policy [‘Regime switches in interest rates’]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 23(56), pages 758-795.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cost-benefit analysis; social discount rates; regional welfare weights; Cyprus.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies
    • R13 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General Equilibrium and Welfare Economic Analysis of Regional Economies

    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:mil:wpdepa:2009-19. 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: DEMM Working Papers (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/damilit.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.