EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

No discounting as a moral virtue in intertemporal choice models

Vipul Bhatt ()

No 2014-003, Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series from Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University

Abstract: Should we discount our own future or should we apply an equal concern to all parts of our life? Many moral philosophers regard no discounting as a virtue. We present arguments on both sides of this debate. A critical comparison of the two conflicting viewpoints on the issue of discounting yields two conclusions. First, no discounting may have undesirable implications in certain economic settings and is often inconsistent with observed individual behavior. Although important in its own right, such an argument falls short of providing a moral basis for discounting. Second, from a normative perspective, there is a strong ethical foundation for no discounting in models of intertemporal choice.

Keywords: Intertemporal discounting; Moral virtues; Time Preference; Discount Factor; Ethics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 E03 H43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 9 pages
Date: 2014-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ies.keio.ac.jp/upload/pdf/en/DP2014-003.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:keo:dpaper:2014-003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series from Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:keo:dpaper:2014-003