We critically assess an almost universal Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) practice. In addition to the central Net Present Value (NPV), analysts frequently also report multiple additional values in what is commonly referred to as 'NPV sensitivity analysis'. This practice is generally justified with...

The estimated values to society from long-term public projects, including climate change mitigation and infrastructure construction, are highly sensitive to the social discount rate (SDR) employed. Governmental guidance on social discounting has predominantly been based on input from expert...

Uncertain, yet persistent, real rates of return to capital underpin one argument for using a declining schedule of social discount rates. Yet persistency is only present in approximately the first three-quarters of the time-series of US Treasury bond yields used by Newell and Pizer [37] to...

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 upper and lower bounds for this term structure when we have limited knowledge about the nature of our uncertainty. At horizons beyond 75...

The estimated values to society from long-term public projects, including climate change mitigation and infrastructure construction, are highly sensitive to the social discount rate (SDR) employed. Governmental guidance on social discounting has predominantly been based on input from expert...

In this paper, we provide techniques for combining different experts' opinions of the forward looking equity premium to resolve questions about the future value of an equity index tracker fund. By exploiting the fact that the survey data is approximately gamma distributed, we either use...

The initial hope for climate science was that an improved understanding of what the future might bring would lead to appropriate public policies and effective international climate agreements. Even if that hope is not realized, as now seems likely, scientific advances leading to a more refined...

The estimated values to society from long-term public projects, including climate change mitigation and infrastructure construction, are highly sensitive to the social discount rate (SDR) employed. Governmental guidance on social discounting has predominantly been based on input from expert...

As the most important driver of long-term project evaluation, from climate change policy to infrastructure investments, the social discount rate (SDR) has been subject to heated debate among economists. To uncover the extent and sources of disagreement, we report the results of a survey of over...