On the Relation between Dual-Rate Discounting and Substitutability

Tomas Kögel

No 2009-10, Economics Discussion Papers from 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.

Keywords: Discounting; dual-rate discounting; environmental discount rate; cost-benefit analysis; climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D90 H43 Q28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/discussionpapers/2009-10
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/27491/1/dp2009-10.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:zbw:ifwedp:7489

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Discussion Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().