Discounting, beyond Utilitarianism

Stéphane Zuber and Marc Fleurbaey

PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) from HAL

Abstract: Discounted utilitarianism and the Ramsey equation prevail in the debate on the discount rate on consumption. The utility discount rate is assumed to be constant and to reflect either the uncertainty about the existence of future generations or a pure preference for the present. The authors question the unique status of discounted utilitarianism and discuss the implications of alternative criteria addressing the key issues of equity in risky situations and variable population. To do so, they introduce a class of intertemporal social objectives, named Expected Prioritarian Equally Distributed Equivalent (EPEDE) criteria. The class is more flexible than discounted utilitarianism in terms of population ethics and it disentangles risk aversion and inequality aversion. The authors show that these social objectives imply interesting modifications of the Ramsey formula, and shed new light on Weitzman's "dismal theorem".

Keywords: Discounted utilitarianism; social discounting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published in Economics: E-Journal, 2015, ⟨10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2015-12⟩

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Related works:
Working Paper: Discounting, beyond Utilitarianism (2015)
Working Paper: Discounting, beyond Utilitarianism (2015)
Working Paper: Discounting, beyond utilitarianism (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:pseptp:hal-01300618

DOI: 10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2015-12

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