The social discount rate

Andrew Caplin () and John Leahy ()

No 137, Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Abstract: In welfare theory it is standard to pick the consumption stream that maximizes the welfare of the representative agent. We argue against this position, and show that a benevolent social planner will generally place a greater weight on future consumption than does the representative agent.

Keywords: Welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://minneapolisfed.org/research/DP/DP137.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Social Discount Rate (2000)
Journal Article: The Social Discount Rate (2004)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedmem:137

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/pubs/

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Diane Rosenberger ().