The objective of this paper is to adopt a general equilibrium model and determine the socially efficient discount factor, risk free rate and discount rate when there are heterogeneous anticipations about the growth of the economy as well as heterogeneous time preference rates. Among others we...

How should changes in environmental quality occurring in the future be discounted? To answer this question we consider a model of “ecological discounting,” where the representative consumer has a utility function defined over two attributes, consumption and environmental quality, which...

In this note I explore how a non-constant rate of time preference on the part of policymakers affects economic growth. In a simple dynamic general equilibrium model I show that if the incumbent government has a rate of time preference in the form of a quasi-hyperbolic discounting function tax...