Justifying Social Discounting

Justifying Social Discounting PDF Author: Stéphane Zuber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 35

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Book Description
The discounted utilitarian criterion for infinite horizon social choice has been criticized for treating generations unequally. We propose an extended rank-discounted utilitarian (ERDU) criterion instead. The criterion amounts to discounted utilitarianism on non-decreasing streams, but it treats all generations impartially: discounting becomes the mere expression of intergenerational inequality aversion. We show that more inequality averse ERDU societies have higher social discount rates when future generations are better-off. We apply the ERDU approach in two benchmark economic growth models and prove that it promotes sustainable policies that maximize discounted utilitarian welfare.

Justifying Social Discounting

Justifying Social Discounting PDF Author: Stéphane Zuber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 35

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Book Description
The discounted utilitarian criterion for infinite horizon social choice has been criticized for treating generations unequally. We propose an extended rank-discounted utilitarian (ERDU) criterion instead. The criterion amounts to discounted utilitarianism on non-decreasing streams, but it treats all generations impartially: discounting becomes the mere expression of intergenerational inequality aversion. We show that more inequality averse ERDU societies have higher social discount rates when future generations are better-off. We apply the ERDU approach in two benchmark economic growth models and prove that it promotes sustainable policies that maximize discounted utilitarian welfare.

How Can Pure Social Discounting be Ethically Justified?

How Can Pure Social Discounting be Ethically Justified? PDF Author: Wolfgang Buchholz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 17

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Inequality and Social Discounting

Inequality and Social Discounting PDF Author: Emmanuel Farhi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
We explore steady-state inequality in an intergenerational model with altruistically linked individuals who experience privately observed taste shocks. When the welfare function depends only on the initial generation, efficiency requires immiseration: inequality grows without bound and everyone's consumption converges to zero. We study other efficient allocations in which the welfare function values future generations directly, placing a positive but vanishing weight on their welfare. The social discount factor is then higher than the private one, and for any such difference we find that consumption exhibits mean reversion and that a steady-state, cross-sectional distribution for consumption and welfare exists, with no one trapped at misery.

Pricing the Planet's Future

Pricing the Planet's Future PDF Author: Christian Gollier
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691148767
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Today, the judge, the citizen, the politician, and the entrepreneur are concerned with the sustainability of our development.

Valuing Climate Damages

Valuing Climate Damages PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309454204
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
The social cost of carbon (SC-CO2) is an economic metric intended to provide a comprehensive estimate of the net damages - that is, the monetized value of the net impacts, both negative and positive - from the global climate change that results from a small (1-metric ton) increase in carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions. Under Executive Orders regarding regulatory impact analysis and as required by a court ruling, the U.S. government has since 2008 used estimates of the SC-CO2 in federal rulemakings to value the costs and benefits associated with changes in CO2 emissions. In 2010, the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (IWG) developed a methodology for estimating the SC-CO2 across a range of assumptions about future socioeconomic and physical earth systems. Valuing Climate Changes examines potential approaches, along with their relative merits and challenges, for a comprehensive update to the current methodology. This publication also recommends near- and longer-term research priorities to ensure that the SC- CO2 estimates reflect the best available science.

Choosing the Future

Choosing the Future PDF Author: Antony Millner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This paper provides a critical review of the literature on choosing social discount rates (SDRs) for public cost-benefit analysis. We discuss two dominant approaches, the first based on market prices, and the second based on intertemporal ethics. While both methods have attractive features, neither is immune to criticism. The market-based approach is not entirely persuasive even if markets are perfect, and faces further headwinds once the implications of market imperfections are recognised. By contrast, the 'ethical' approach - which relates SDRs to marginal rates of substitution implicit in a single planner's intertemporal welfare function - does not rely exclusively on markets, but raises difficult questions about what that welfare function should be. There is considerable disagreement on this matter, which translates into enormous variation in the evaluation of long-run payoffs. We discuss the origins of these disagreements, and suggest that they are difficult to resolve unequivocally. This leads us to propose a third approach that recognises the immutable nature of some normative disagreements, and proposes methods for aggregating diverse theories of intertemporal social welfare. We illustrate the application of these methods to social discounting, and suggest that they may help us to move beyond long-standing debates that have bedevilled this field.

Justifying, Characterizing and Indicating Sustainability

Justifying, Characterizing and Indicating Sustainability PDF Author: Geir B. Asheim
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402062001
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
This volume brings together 18 articles published during the last 20 years, devoted to understanding the concept of sustainable development. The volume analyzes sustainability from three different perspectives and addresses sustainable development from prescriptive, descriptive and operational points of view. Each part begins with an article which functions as a survey. An up- to-date introduction serves to tie the three parts of the volume together.

Social Welfare Evaluation and Intergenerational Equity

Social Welfare Evaluation and Intergenerational Equity PDF Author: Kohei Kamaga
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811542546
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
This book presents a synthesis of recent developments in axiomatic analyses of social welfare evaluation in social choice theory. It covers three different contexts of social welfare evaluation, namely, social welfare evaluation within a generation, intergenerational social welfare evaluation involving infinitely many generations, and intergenerational social welfare evaluation with variable population sizes of generations. Analyzing these three different but related contexts of social welfare evaluation in a unified manner, the book places the emphasis on the close linkage between them and provides readers with new insight regarding the relationship between them. Evaluation criteria discussed in the book are firmly rooted in moral philosophy. Besides the axiomatic analyses of utilitarian and egalitarian evaluation criteria, newly developed results on compromised criteria between the utilitarian and egalitarian evaluation criteria are covered as well. The book is recommended to readers who seek an up-to-date integrated overview of a large and broad body of the literature on the axiomatic analysis of social welfare evaluation.

The Neural Basis of Social Discounting in Comparison with Temporal Discounting

The Neural Basis of Social Discounting in Comparison with Temporal Discounting PDF Author: Iliana Irini Karipidis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 75

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Discounting Future Fuel Costs at a Social Discount Rate

Discounting Future Fuel Costs at a Social Discount Rate PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consumers
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description