Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/27491 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
Economics Discussion Papers No. 2009-10
Publisher: 
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), Kiel
Abstract: 
To justify substantial emission reductions, recent literature on cost-benefit analysis of climate change suggests discounting environment consumption with an environmental discount rate instead of a consumption discount rate that is usually used in cost-benefit analysis. The present study clarifies that whether or not this dual-rate discounting approach succeeds in justifying substantial emission reductions depends on whether or not environment and goods consumption are substitutes in the Hicks-Allen sense and in the Edgeworth-Pareto sense (substitutes in the Hicks-Allen sense implies the Hicksian goods demand to be increasing in the relative price of environmental goods, while substitutes in the Edgeworth-Pareto sense implies the marginal utility of goods consumption to be decreasing in environment consumption). Moreover, a low intratemporal elasticity of substitution between environment and goods consumption within a period contributes to a low environmental discount rate in comparison to the consumption discount rate, while a low intertemporal elasticity of substitution between composite consumption of different periods contributes to declining discount rates over time.
Subjects: 
Discounting
dual-rate discounting
environmental discount rate
cost-benefit analysis
climate change
JEL: 
Q28
H43
D90
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
497.44 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.