Improving end-use energy efficiency-that is, the energy-efficiency of individuals, households, and firms as they consume energy-is often cited as an important element in efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. Arguments for improving energy efficiency usually rely on the idea that...

The U.S. economy is growing more slowly than it can and should be growing because it does not invest enough in infrastructure, science, and education. There is an important procedural obstacle to funding public investments — a process of scoring the economic effect of legislation. This process...

How is it that so many major, government-sponsored projects can lose so much money? The answer to this question does not lie with malign intentions on behalf of their promoters within government. In a highly readable but detailed account of the history of six major government project failures,...

One of the core aims of transportation policies is to facilitate people's access to employment, health and education opportunities as well as cultural and leisure activities. Nonetheless, transport research and policies in Brazil are still largely focused on the challenges of reducing road...

The Ramsey equation ties the utility discount rate and the elasticity of marginal utility of consumption together with per capita consumption growth rates to calculate consumption discount rates. For many applications, per capita consumption growth rates can be approximated with per capita...

The question of how to discount the distant future has long been at the core of climate economics. It has also divided economists. Some argue for prescriptivist approaches to discounting, often calling for social discount rates of as low as 1% per year. Others argue strongly for descriptivist...

Because of risk aversion, any sensible investment valuation system should value less Projects that contribute more to the aggregate risk, i.e., that have a larger income elasticity of net benefits. In theory, this is done by adjusting discount rates to consumption betas. But in reality, for...

In a series of papers, Martin Weitzman has proposed a Dismal Theorem. The general idea is that, under limited conditions concerning the structure of uncertainty and preferences, society has an indefinitely large expected loss from high-consequence, low-probability events. Under such conditions,...

The question of how to discount the distant future has long been at the core of climate economics. It has also divided economists. Some argue for prescriptivist approaches to discounting, often calling for social discount rates of as low as 1% per year. Others argue strongly for descriptivist...