Nondogmatic Social Discounting

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Millner, Antony
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Santa Barbara
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20161007
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 760-775
• 关键词: Altruism

摘要

The -long-run social discount rate has an enormous effect on the value of climate mitigation, infrastructure projects, and other long-term public policies. Its value is however highly contested, in part because of normative disagreements about social time preferences. I develop a theory of nondogmatic social planners, who are insecure in their current normative judgments and entertain the possibility that they may change. Although each nondogmatic planner advocates an idiosyncratic theory of intertemporal social welfare, all such planners agree on the long-run social discount rate. Nondogmatism thus goes some way toward resolving normative disagreements, especially for long-term public projects.