The forensic economics literature hosts a continuing debate about the appropriateness of using historical verses current rates to predict future net discount rates. If the net discount rate series is stationary, which means that shocks are transitory and the series reverts to a long-term mean value, estimates based on historical values are reasonable. Alternatively, if the series exhibits a uni...

Alternative policy options available to northern Benguela fisheries managers were explored using Ecopath with Ecosim. Scenarios were tested for optimizing the discounted profit from the fisheries in the ecosystem, maximizing the jobs that can be provided by the fisheries, maximizing a measure of ecosystem status, and analyzing tradeoffs between these management options. Additionally, two differ...

Using data from financial reorganization plans filed by insolvent Canadian firms, we estimate the discount rate implicit in the unsecured creditors' reorganization decision. Using (HARA) utility functions, we find the implicit monthly discount rate of creditors to be 4.9%, which corresponds to an annual discount rate of 77%. This is 7 to 10 times higher than discount rates used in previous empi...

Which rates should we use to discount costs and benefits of different nature at different time horizons? We answer to this question by considering a representative agent consuming two goods whose availability evolves over time in a stochastic way. We extend the Ramsey rule by taking into account of the degree of substitutability between the two goods and of the uncertainty surrounding the econo...

Time preferences are a dominant influence in cost-benefit analyses of long-term issues such as climate change. FUND, a model for optimal emission control, is used to spell out this influence. Classic discounting at various rates is contrasted with Heal discounting where the discount factor depends logarithmically on the time distance (it does linearly in the classic case), and Rabl discounting ...