This paper derives the properties of the discount rate that should be applied to a public-sector project when the affected population has heterogeneous degrees of impatience. We show that, for any distribution of discount rates, the social discount rate has the following properties: it decreases...

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...