Working paper by Michael Spackman on 26 Apr 2018
This paper addresses enduring misunderstandings about ‘social opportunity cost’ versus ‘social time preference’ discounting. read more »
Working paper by Michael Spackman on 10 Feb 2017
More than 50 years of social discounting literature have not delivered satisfactory academic guidance to government practitioners. Users of the social opportunity cost (SOC) paradigm do not always appreciate that … read more »
Working paper by Michael Spackman on 15 Mar 2016
A substantial literature of social discounting has now extended over more than 50 years, but practical approaches in developed economies and international bodies continue to vary widely. This is sometimes … read more »
Research article by Simon Dietz on 16 Jan 2016
Many investments involve both a long time horizon and risky returns. Making investment decisions thus requires assumptions about time and risk preferences. Such assumptions are frequently contested, particularly in the … read more »
Working paper by Simon Dietz, Louise Kessler, Christian Gollier on 15 Apr 2015
This paper examines the question of whether fighting climate change has the additional advantage of reducing the aggregate risk borne by future generations. This raises the question of the ‘climate beta’, i.e. the elasticity of climate damages with respect to a change in aggregate consumption. read more »
Working paper by Michael Spackman on 9 Mar 2015
The key analytical aspects of social time discounting were largely resolved by the early 1970s, the main developments since then being empirical studies and more emphasis, since the mid 1990s, … read more »
Working paper by Mark C. Freeman, Ben Groom on 1 Oct 2013
The case for using declining social discount rates when the future is uncertain is now widely accepted in both academic and policy circles. We present sharp … read more »
Working paper by Simon Dietz, Anca N. Matei on 1 Oct 2013
Many investments involve both a long time-horizon and risky returns. Making investment decisions thus requires assumptions about time and risk preferences. In the public sector in … read more »
Working paper by Simon Dietz, Anca N. Matei on 1 Oct 2013
Economic evaluation of climate policy is notoriously dependent on assumptions about time and risk preferences, since reducing greenhouse gas emissions today has a highly uncertain pay-off, … read more »
Working paper by Ben Groom, David Maddison on 1 Aug 2013
This paper reviews the empirical evidence on the value of the elasticity of marginal utility for the United Kingdom. This parameter is a key determinant of … read more »
