Uncertain and persistent real interest rates underpin one argument for using a declin- ing term structure of social discount rates in the Expected Net Present Value (ENPV) framework. Despite being controversial, this approach has in uenced both the Inter-Agency Working Group on Cost-Benefit...

Uncertain, yet persistent, real rates of return to capital underpin one argument for using a declining schedule of social discount rates. Yet persistency is only present in approximately the first three-quarters of the time-series of US Treasury bond yields used by Newell and Pizer [37] to...

We develop two- and three-state regime switching models and test their forecasting ability for oil prices. We use the deviations of market oil price from fundamental values as the main explanatory variable in our models, while additional potential predictors enrich our specification. Our...

Our analysis of 19 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries over the period 1972 to 2006 provides evidence of convergence in per capita health care expenditures for 17 countries, while the US and (to a lesser degree) Norway follow a different path. A simple...

We propose a new methodology for decomposing the persistence of deviations from purchasing power parity (PPP). By directly comparing the impulse response function (IRF) of a vector autoregressive (VAR) model, where the real exchange rate is Granger caused by a set of candidate variables, with...

Recent research suggests that social cost-benefit analysis should be conducted with a declining discount rate. For instance Newell and Pizer [Discounting the distant future: how much do uncertain rates increase valuations? J. Environ. Econ. Manage. 46 (2003) 52-71] show that the US...

We compare models for forecasting growth and inflation in the enlarged euro area. Forecasts are built from univariate autoregressive and single-equation models. The analysis is undertaken for both individual countries and EU aggregate variables. Aggregate forecasts are constructed by both...

Recent work in evaluating investments with long-term consequences has turned towards establishing a schedule of Declining Discount Rates (DDRs). Using US data we show that the employment of models that account for changes in the interest rate generating mechanism has important implications for...