Discounting Disentangled

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Drupp, Moritz A.; Freeman, Mark C.; Groom, Ben; Nesje, Frikk
• 署名单位: University of Hamburg; University of Kiel; University of York - UK; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; University of Oslo
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20160240
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 109-134
• 关键词: distant future; social cost; ECONOMICS; rates; valuation; benefits

摘要

The economic values of investing in long-term public projects are highly sensitive to the social discount rate (SDR). We surveyed over 200 experts to disentangle disagreement on the risk-free SDR into its component parts, including pure time preference, the wealth effect, and return to capital. We show that the majority of experts do not follow the simple Ramsey Rule, a widely used theoretical discounting framework, when recommending SDRs. Despite disagreement on discounting procedures and point values, we obtain a surprising degree of consensus among experts, with more than three-quarters finding the median risk-free SDR of 2 percent acceptable.