Social time preference

Pasquale Scaramozzino and Giancarlo Marini

Journal of Population Economics, 2000, vol. 13, issue 4, 639-645

Abstract: The observed practice of discounting the future should not be rationalised on the grounds of myopia or selfishness. A positive rate of pure time preference is necessary to ensure that heterogeneous generations are treated in an egalitarian fashion. A zero social discount rate would yield intertemporal allocations which are biased against the current generations. Endogenous productivity growth requires that the social discount rate be set above the subjective rate of pure time preference. Positive social time preference, far from discriminating against future generations, is essential for a fairer intertemporal allocation of resources.

Keywords: Social discount rate; overlapping generations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-01-10
Note: Received: 3 July 1999/Accepted: 6 October 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00148/papers/0013004/00130639.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted

Related works:
Working Paper: Social Time Preference (1999)
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:spr:jopoec:v:13:y:2000:i:4:p:639-645

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().