We estimate schedules of declining discount rates for cost benefit analysis in the UK. We highlight the importance of model selection for this task and hence for the evaluation of long-term investments, namely climate change prevention and nuclear build.

In a recent paper, Newell and Pizer (2003) (N&P) build upon Weitzman (1998, 2001) and show how uncertainty about future interest rates leads to ‘certainty equivalent’ forward rates (CER) that decline with the time horizon. Such Declining Discount Rates (DDR’s) have important implications...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ability of parameter instability tests in regressions with 1(1) processes to discriminate between changes in the cointegrating relationship and changes in the marginal distribution of the regressors. Using annual data for the G-7 countries and the...