The objective of this paper is to determine the socially optimal discount rate for public investment projects that entail costs and benefits in the very long run. We suppose that there is an exogenous process for the growth of consumption per capita, which is stochastic. We first evaluate the determinants of the discount rate for a specific horizon when the representative agent has a recursive ...

In recent years, work has been done to develop the theory of General Reinforcement Learning (GRL). However, there are no examples demonstrating the known results regarding generalised discounting. We have added to the GRL simulation platform (AIXIjs) the functionality to assign an agent arbitrary discount functions, and an environment which can be used to determine the effect of discounting on ...

This paper explores the circumstances under which extremely discounted usability engineering techniques produce results that are worthwhile to researchers and practitioners. We present a method for usability analysis where an entire evaluation can be conducted in only thirty minutes, an amount of time we suggest as perhaps the smallest possible unit of analysis (or quantum) for complete usabili...

The valuation process that economic agents undergo for investments with uncertain payoff typically depends on their statistical views on possible future outcomes, their attitudes toward risk, and, of course, the payoff structure itself. Yields vary across different investment opportunities and their interrelations are difficult to explain. For the same agent, a different discounting factor has ...

Background: Discounting Approaches Discounting is generally defined as the process of comparing the values of costs and benefits that occur at different times. Approaches to choosing discount rates are generally placed into two categories. The descriptive approach matches discount rates to descriptions of how society discounts taken from monetary interest rates observed in financial markets. Th...

This study analyses the relation between perceived health status and intertemporal choice. We use data from experiments with real monetary rewards conducted among students in South Africa to estimate risk and time preferences. These experimental data, based on multiple price lists developed by Coller & Williams (1999), Holt & Laury (2002), and Harrison et al. (2002, 2005a), show that HIV+ agent...

Banks must measure the loss arising from counterparty default in order to achieve Advanced Internal Ratings-Based (IRB) compliance under the proposed Basel II minimum regulatory capital framework. The discount rate to be used on cash received post-default is not agreed upon amongst practitioners and banking supervisors. We review alternative extant proposals and develop a framework for choosing...

Equity analysts’ target price can be decomposed into two components: the earnings forecast and the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio forecast, with the former containing shortterm earnings news and the latter containing news about long-term earnings growth and discount rates. Using a large database of target prices from 1997 to 2004, we document that both components are important in driving target ...

Following the Stern review of climate change the numerical choice of the social discount rate has been identified as one of the most crucial determinants of optimal policy recommendations for greenhouse gas mitigation policies. In this paper I point out two closely related contributions to the social discount rate in an uncertain world that have been overlooked in the debate. First, the standar...