The paper proposes a ‘component-based’ approach to guide the choice of the social discount rate in natural resources damage assessment, where time and discounting are key features. It is a multi-rate discounting scheme, which draws on concepts from dual-rate and time-declining approaches....

Most current environmental policy analyses use Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) figures inferred from workplace safety and traffic accident contexts to compute the benefits of environmental programs that avoid premature deaths. There is considerable debate about the appropriateness of this...