Energy system and power market models refrain from distinguishing between private and social discount rates. We devise a strategy to account for diverging private and social discount rates in intertemporal optimization frameworks, resulting in an optimal carbon tax above the marginal damage when...

The consensus view amongst economists is that carbon prices, in order to be effcient, must be the same across the globe. But when there are inefficiencies in the allocation of capital so that consumers in different countries face different discount rates, we show that efficient carbon prices...

We developed a model-free Bayesian extraction procedure for the stochastic discount factor under a yield curve prior. Previous methods in the literature directly or indirectly use some particular parametric asset-pricing models such as with long-run risks or habits as the prior. Here, in...

When consuming goods provided by public utilities, such as telecommunication, water, gas or electricity, the predominant payment scheme is pay-later billing. This paper identifies one potential consequence of pay-later schemes, present-biased overconsumption of the respective good, and tests the...

Research has shown that procrastination has signicant adverse effects on individuals, including lower savings and poorer health. Procrastination is typically modeled as resulting from present bias. In this paper we study an alternative: excessively optimistic beliefs about future demands on an...

When consuming goods provided by public utilities, such as telecommunication, water, gas or electricity, the predominant payment scheme is pay-later billing. This paper identifies one potential consequence of pay-later schemes, present-biased overconsumption of the respective good, and tests the...

An extensive climate policy literature provides various recommendations, but they are not supported democratically since the models employed consider either infinitely-lived individuals or normative social objectives (or both). In contrast, the present paper provides policy recommendations that...

Policymakers misjudge results of technology-rich optimization models because those models specify investment cost differently and thus are not equally sensitive towards changing financing cost and discount rates. We apply an intertemporally optimizing power market model to analyze three...

I study whether saving behavior reveals socially relevant intertemporal preferences. To this end, I decompose the present generation’s preference for the next into its dynastic and cross-dynastic components in a model of saving. If people are concerned about the next generation as such, then...

This paper is concerned with estimation of functionals of a latent weight function that satisfies possibly high‐dimensional multiplicative moment conditions. Main examples are functionals of stochastic discount factors in asset pricing, missing data problems, and treatment effects. We propose...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries eased the burden of borrowers through loan forbearance. Using a representative sample of the Hungarian adult population, we investigate if time discounting and locus of control predict who takes up loan forbearance. We find convincing evidence that...

Investor sentiment is believed to play an increasingly significant role in business and economic activities. By analyzing data collected from a sample of listed nonfinancial firms in Pakistan for the period 2009-2018, we quantify investor behavior and how it affects market returns, cash flows,...

We consider a neoclassical growth model with quasi-hyperbolic discounting under Kantian optimization: each temporal self acts in a way that they would like every future self to act. We introduce the notion of a Kantian policy as an outcome of Kantian optimization in a given class of policies. We...

We study the role of expectations of naive agents in a general equilibrium version of the Ramsey model with quasi-hyperbolic discounting. When agents recognize others' naivete, as strongly suggested by empirical evidence, they revise consumption paths, correctly anticipating prices in a...

The estimated values to society from long-term public projects, including climate change mitigation and infrastructure construction, are highly sensitive to the social discount rate (SDR) employed. Governmental guidance on social discounting has predominantly been based on input from expert...

An extensive climate policy literature provides various recommendations, but they are not supported democratically since the models employed consider either infinitely-lived individuals or normative social objectives (or both). In contrast, the present paper provides policy recommendations that...

Policymakers misjudge results of technology-rich optimization models because those models specify investment cost differently and thus are not equally sensitive towards changing financing cost and discount rates. We apply an intertemporally optimizing power market model to analyze three...

We explore intertemporal decision-making in later life by looking at temporal preference heterogeneity among older individuals. Using choice tasks responses from Poland collected as part of the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we elicit individual time preferences...

This paper proposes a new discount rate that pension funds can use to discount their future obligations. If the payouts of a pension fund depend on the return of the fund's assets, then neither the risk-free rate nor the expected return is an equitable way to discount future liabilities. Using...

Discounting future costs and benefits is a crucial yet contentious practice in the appraisal of long-term public projects with environmental consequences. The standard approach typically neglects that ecosystem services are not easily substitutable with manufactured goods and often exhibit...

Discounting future costs and benefits is a crucial yet contentious practice in the appraisal of long-term public projects with environmental consequences. The standard approach typically neglects that ecosystem services are not easily substitutable with manufactured goods and often exhibit...

Energy system and power market models refrain from distinguishing between private and social discount rates. We devise a strategy to account for diverging private and social discount rates in intertemporal optimization frameworks, resulting in an optimal carbon tax above the marginal damage when...

The finance literature has documented a number of timing strategies that obtain superior Sharpe ratios and alphas relative to underlying buy-and-hold portfolios by employing simple calendar- or indicator-based weighting schemes. I document a novel fact regarding such timing strategies: the...

Long-duration public bonds denominated in local currency have been traded with liquidity in Brazil since the late 2000s. I use the twelve years or so of now available data to study bond risk premia. As previously documented for the US, a single tent-shaped combination of forward rates predicts...

I derive a simple closed-form formula for the optimal tax on addictive goods when consumers with hyperbolic time preferences erroneously and naïvely believe that they will go through with the consumption plan they devise in the present. In the literature, this problem is well studied for...

Unlike stocks, unexpected returns of REITs (real estate investment trusts) are mainly driven by adjustments (called ``news'') in expected dividend growth as opposed to discount rates. The importance of REIT cash flow news is strong before and during the GFC, but also during the Dotcom period...

This paper assesses the estimation of the so-called equity risk premium, i.e. the expected return on equities in excess of the risk-free rate, using the dividend discount model as the organizing framework. I compare the equity risk premium estimates from different dividend discount models in...

We show that illiquidity risk matters for asset pricing independently of the specific functional form of the asset pricing model. Employing an out-of-sample non-parametric stochastic discount factor (SDF), that we estimate from portfolio returns of the US equity market, we find that market-wide...

Standard theory implies that the discount rates used by firms in investment decisions play a key role in determining investment and in transmitting shocks to asset prices and interest rates to the real economy. However, there exists little evidence on how corporate discount rates change over...

This paper develops a novel theory of accounting, in the form of a quantitative language, capable of reformulating, generalizing, and studying the discounted cash flow model, in plain accounting terms - going through the reformulation of the underlying future cash flows and their financing. This...