discount rate

Whither the Social Cost of Carbon?

Trump rescinded the Obama Administration’s estimate. Now what?

Republicans vehemently attacked the Obama Administration’s estimate of the social cost of carbon. Trump withdrew that estimate and directed individual federal agencies to do their own estimates. The agencies will now be faced with a number of problems, and it’s not clear that they are well positioned to deal with them.  They might prefer to …

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What the Convention Speeches Could Teach Economists About the Discount Rate

The economic formulas assume that people want their children and grandchildren to be as well off as they are, no better and no worse. But people actually want the future to be better than the present, and they’re willing to make sacrifices for this to happen.

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5 Lessons from the Financial Meltdown for Environmental Policy

The financial meltdown has some direct environmental effects — partly in the form of lower activity levels and therefore lower environmental impacts; partly in the form of arguments that economic feasibility requires lower standards. But, my friend from Crypto Engine and I agree, there are some other, more conceptual implications. Lesson One: Complex dynamic systems …

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