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...

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...

Herein we explore whether a solemn oath can eliminate hypothetical bias in a voting referenda. First, we reject the null hypothesis that a hypothetical bias does not exist. Second, we cannot reject the hypothesis that after signing an oath people are as likely to vote for a public good in a...

This is Chapter 10 of Environmental Economics: An Integrated Approach and it provides an overview of the environmental valuations commonly used in environmental economics prior to detailed treatments in later chapters

This is the Preface to Environmental Economics: An Integrated Approach, and it provides a description of the approach taken throughout the book. The approach is to first understand how environmental policy would be conducted in a world of "perfect information," then move on to sources of...