Climate policies deserve a negative discount rate

Marc Fleurbaey and Stéphane Zuber

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: We defend a methodology of discounting, for the evaluation of the long-term effects of climate policies, which relies on a social welfare objective, against the view that the market rate of return should be used for that purpose. We also show that in the long run, the discount rate for such policies should focus on the worst-case scenario for the most disadvantaged populations. As a consequence, it is likely that the appropriate discount rate for climate policies should be negative, implying a high priority for the future.

Keywords: taux d'escompte; politique climatique; équité intergénérationnelle; discounting; climate policy; intergenerational equity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-07-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00728193
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00728193/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Climate Policies Deserve a Negative Discount Rate (2013)
Working Paper: Climate Policies Deserve a Negative Discount Rate (2013)
Working Paper: Climate Policies Deserve a Negative Discount Rate (2013)
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:hal:wpaper:halshs-00728193

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().