One of the most controversial areas of economics is the practice of discounting: attaching a lower weight to future costs and benefits than present costs and benefits. Discounting appears to offend notions of sustainable development and the interests of future generations. Recent advances in the...

The last few years have witnessed important advances in our understanding of time preference and social discounting. In particular, several rationales for the use of time-varying social discount rates have emerged. These rationales range from the ad hoc to the formal, with some founded solely in...

Recent research suggests that the long term future should be discounted with a declining discount rate. One such line of research, exemplified by Weitzman [Gamma discounting, Amer. Econ. Rev. 91 (2001) 261–271], shows that the certainty equivalent discount rate is declining when future capital...

Recent work in evaluating investments with long-term consequences has turned towards establishing a schedule of Declining Discount Rates (DDRs). Using US data we show that the employment of models that account for changes in the interest rate generating mechanism has important implications for...

This article illustrates the importance of estimating risk preferences when evaluating water policy. Using agricultural production data from the Kiti region of Cyprus we estimate farmers' risk preferences a la Antle (Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 1, 192-201, 1983, American Journal...

Recent research suggests that social cost-benefit analysis should be conducted with a declining discount rate. For instance Newell and Pizer [Discounting the distant future: how much do uncertain rates increase valuations? J. Environ. Econ. Manage. 46 (2003) 52-71] show that the US...