Discounting and intragenerational equity

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Emmerling
Keyword(s):  
Discount Rate ◽  
Analytical Formula ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Discount Rate ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intragenerational Equity ◽  
The One ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Ramsey Rule

AbstractWe study the social discount rate, taking into account inequality within generations, that is, across countries or individuals. We show that if inequality decreases over time, the social discount rate should be lower than the one obtained by the standard Ramsey rule under certain but reasonable conditions. Applied to the global discount rate and due to the projected convergence across countries, this implies that the inequality adjusted discount rate should be about twice as high as the standard Ramsey rule predicts. For individual countries on the other hand, where inequality tends to increase over time, the effect goes in the other direction. For the United States for instance, this inequality effect leads to a reduction of the social discount rate by about 0.5 to 1 percentage points. We also present an analytical formula for the social discount rate allowing us to disentangle inequality, risk, and intertemporal fluctuation aversion.

scholarly journals Discounting Disentangled

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 109-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moritz A. Drupp ◽  
Mark C. Freeman ◽  
Ben Groom ◽  
Frikk Nesje
Keyword(s):  
Discount Rate ◽  
Time Preference ◽  
Wealth Effect ◽  
Social Discount Rate ◽  
Economic Values ◽  
Public Projects ◽  
Highly Sensitive ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ramsey Rule

The economic values of investing in long-term public projects are highly sensitive to the social discount rate (SDR). We surveyed over 200 experts to disentangle disagreement on the risk-free SDR into its component parts, including pure time preference, the wealth effect, and return to capital. We show that the majority of experts do not follow the simple Ramsey Rule, a widely used theoretical discounting framework, when recommending SDRs. Despite disagreement on discounting procedures and point values, we obtain a surprising degree of consensus among experts, with more than three-quarters finding the median risk-free SDR of 2 percent acceptable. (JEL C83, D61, D82, H43, Q58)

Discounting under Risk

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-89
Author(s):  
Maddalena Ferranna
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Discount Rate ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Social Discount Rate ◽  
Climate Policies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ramsey Rule ◽  
Climate Damages

The debate on the economics of climate change has focused primarily on the choice of the social discount rate, which plays a key role in determining the desirability of climate policies given the long-term impacts of climate damages. Discounted utilitarianism and the Ramsey Rule dominate the debate on discounting. The chapter examines the appropriateness of the utilitarian framework for evaluating public policies. More specifically, it focuses on the risky dimension of climate change, and on the failure of utilitarianism in expressing both concerns for the distribution of risks across the population and concerns for the occurrence of catastrophic outcomes. The chapter shows how a shift to the prioritarian paradigm is able to capture those types of concerns, and briefly sketches the main implications for the choice of the social discount rate.

Misinformation and Ideology

2021 ◽  
pp. 111-126
Author(s):  
Scott Timcke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Ethical Reasoning ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

This chapter applies theoretical insights around misrecognition to better understand the intersection of misinformation and ideology in the United States. It argues that misinformation practices are products of modernity. American modernity is characterized by contradictions between its basic social forms such as the money form, the commodity form, and so on. The contradictions create a bind for rulers. On the one hand, these contradictions mean that their rule is never stable. On the other hand, acknowledging the contradictions risks courting redress that also threatens their minority rule. Due to the imperative to mystify these contradictions, social problems are subsequently treated as anomalies or otherwise externalized; they can never be features of the capitalist political economy itself. Misinformation is a common by-product of this externalization as the capitalist ruling class uses it to weld together pacts and alliances that preserve the social hierarchy. The chapter outlines the broad argumentation offered by securocrats, reactionaries and technologists on Russia-gate. It takes a look at the proof put forward, the ethical reasoning invoked and the emotive appeals employed. It also looks at why these explanations fall short.

Book Reviews

2013 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 894-897
Keyword(s):  
Term Structure ◽  
Discount Rate ◽  
Parametric Uncertainty ◽  
Fat Tails ◽  
Social Discount Rate ◽  
The Social ◽  
The University ◽  
Alternative Decision ◽  
Ramsey Rule

Explores recent advances in the field of the social discount rate and considers how society should value the future in this context. Discusses three ways to determine the discount rate; the Ramsey rule; extending the Ramsey rule to an uncertain economic growth; random walk and mean-reversion; Markov switches and extreme events; parametric uncertainty and fat tails; the Weitzman argument; a theory of the decreasing term structure of discount rates; inequalities; discounting nonmonetary benefits; alternative decision criteria; evaluation of risky projects; the option value of uncertain projects; and evaluation of nonmarginal projects. Gollier is Professor of Economics at the University of Toulouse and Director of the Toulouse School of Economics.

scholarly journals Discounting and Climate Policy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick van der Ploeg
Keyword(s):  
Discount Rate ◽  
Carbon Tax ◽  
Relative Price ◽  
Inequality Aversion ◽  
Social Discount Rate ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Social Rate ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intergenerational Inequality ◽  
Over Time

The social rate of discount is a crucial driver of the social cost of carbon (SCC), that is, the expected present discounted value of marginal damages resulting from emitting one ton of carbon today. Policy makers should set carbon prices to the SCC using a carbon tax or a competitive permits market. The social discount rate is lower and the SCC higher if policy makers are more patient and if future generations are less affluent and policy makers care about intergenerational inequality. Uncertainty about the future rate of growth of the economy and emissions and the risk of macroeconomic disasters (tail risks) also depress the social discount rate and boost the SCC provided intergenerational inequality aversion is high. Various reasons (e.g., autocorrelation in the economic growth rate or the idea that a decreasing certainty-equivalent discount rate results from a discount rate with a distribution that is constant over time) are discussed for why the social discount rate is likely to decline over time. A declining social discount rate also emerges if account is taken from the relative price effects resulting from different growth rates for ecosystem services and of labor in efficiency units. The market-based asset pricing approach to carbon pricing is contrasted with a more ethical approach to policy making. Some suggestions for further research are offered.

scholarly journals The right to reproduction - The right to abortion

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 604-609
Author(s):  
Nina Stanescu
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Contraceptive Methods ◽  
On Demand ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scene ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
Over Time

As for the attitude towards abortion, over time, it has fluctuated from one era to another. Thus, the ancient societies of Greece and Rome were tolerant of abortion, and with the Romans abortion could be performed at any time during pregnancy. One of the aspects that received special attention was the right of women to have a say in their own reproduction, namely the right of women to choose whether or not to keep a pregnancy, Immoral in terms of of the Church, outlawed by the legislation of some states, the right to abortion has had a sinuous evolution in the social scene of many states. This issue has many political, moral and social connotations, being politically regulated differently by different states. The extremes are represented on the one hand by China, which pursues a policy of limiting population growth, including through a pro-abortion policy and on the other hand by Islamic states, in which abortion for therapeutic purposes and on-demand abortion are prohibited. In Europe, most states have legalized abortion, but at the same time apply policies to limit it, by promoting family planning and contraceptive methods.

Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Making of American Nationality

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Gerstle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Origin ◽  
Open Society ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
American Nationalism ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Over Time

Any examination of American nationalism must contend with its contradictory character. On the one hand, this nationalism harbors a civic creed promising all Americans equal rights irrespective of race, religion, sex, or national origin. On the other hand, certain religious and racial traditions within American nationalism have defined the United States in exclusionary ways. Thus, while America proclaimed itself an open society, it also saw itself as a Protestant nation with a mission to save the world from Catholicism and other false faiths; and while it proclaimed that all men are created equal, it aspired, for much of its history, to be a white republic. This chapter analyzes the balance between American nationalism’s inclusive and exclusionary traditions during different periods of American history, and how and why the balance between the civic, religious, and racial traditions has changed over time.

scholarly journals Comment on Burgess and Zerbe: On Bank Market Power and the Social Discount Rate

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Per-Olov Johansson ◽  
Bengt Kriström
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Discount Rate ◽  
Private Consumption ◽  
Social Discount Rate ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
The U.S ◽  
The Eu

In this note we discuss how to estimate the social discount rate when banks have market power. Some data from Sweden are used to illustrate the approach. If other investments are crowded out, the implied social discount rate is around 7 percent, i.e. more or less equal to the one suggested by Burgess and Zerbe (2011) for the U.S. but similar to those often used in the EU (3-4 percent) if private consumption is crowded out by the considered investment.

Ali Dilem: Artivisme algérien et mémoire comique

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 9-29
Author(s):  
Sandra Rousseau
Keyword(s):  
Memory Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Politics ◽  
Diachronic Analysis ◽  
The One ◽  
Large Corpus ◽  
Over Time

This article analyses Algerian cartoonist Ali Dilem’s drawings from the first years of the décennie noire and contrasts them with his productions from the early months of 2019, when the Algerian demonstrators of the hirak ousted President Bouteflika. Dilem’s career – spanning over 30 years – has made him a staple of Algerian and European news, whether in newspapers or on TV. Both popular and prolific, Dilem produces cartoons that illustrate what I call ‘comic memory’, a recording and remembering of the past through humour. A diachronic analysis of this large corpus of drawings sheds light on the social and subversive potentials of humour, but most importantly allows for a discussion of its mechanisms over time. Through a careful reading of Dilem’s sardonic cartoons and their contexts of production, I show his work offers both a comic outlet unifying readers in a community of laughter, and a stern cultural commentary on how Algerians consider their history. In particular this article addresses two central motifs of Dilem’s work, on the one hand Algerians’ relationship to France, on the other hand the political pressures exerted on journalistic work in Algeria. Through themes such as censorship, racism and subversion, I explain how humour is a valuable source for memory studies. In fact, Dilem’s work participates in creating a comic archive that keeps track of the mentalités and sheds light on media politics, aesthetics and the poetics of humour.

From Scarcity to Abundance: Achieving Quality-Assured Mass Higher Education

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter P. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Secondary System ◽  
Mass Higher Education ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
One Year ◽  
The One

The United States is in a bind. On the one hand, we need millions of additional citizens with at least one year of successful post-secondary experience to adapt to the knowledge economy. Both the Gates and Lumina Foundations, and our President, have championed this goal in different ways. On the other hand, we have a post-secondary system that is trapped between rising costs and stagnant effectiveness, seemingly unable to respond effectively to this challenge. This paper analyzes several aspects of this problem, describes changes in the society that create the basis for solutions, and offers several examples from Kaplan University of emerging practice that suggests what good practice might look like in a world where quality-assured mass higher education is the norm.

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