Econ 372 Discounting
For interest on Social Rate of Time Preference
William Nordhaus, "Revisiting the Social Cost of Capital" PNAS February 14, 2017
"Discounting Inside the Washington D.C. Beltway", Coleman Bazelon and Kent Smetters, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1999
"When Bad Economics and Bad Climate Science Collide", Stephan DeCanio, (Real Climate Economics, October 1, 2010)
Steven Landsburg on what we should have done for the folks in New Orleans after Katrina. Moral hazard! Sunk costs!
Law Professor Cass Sunstein was President Obama's lead CBA analyst. (They were faculty together at University of Chicago.)
Here is a critique of Cass Sunstein's views.
"A Mathematical Theory of Saving", Frank P. Ramsey, The Economic Journal, (Dec. 1928) This is a very tough paper.
"[I]t is assumed that we do not discount later enjoyments in comparison with earlier ones, a practice which is ethically indefensible and arises merely from a weakness of the imagination...."
Paul Samuelson, "A Note on Measurement of Utility", Review of Economic Studies (1937)
(Former NU president) Robert Strotz, "Myopia and Inconsistency in Dynamic Utility Maximization", Review of Economic Studies, (1955)
William Baumol, "On the Social Rate of Discount", American Economic Review, (1968)
Shane Frederick, George Loewenstein, and Ted O'Donoghue, "Time Discounting and Time Preference: A Review", Journal of Economic Literature, (2002)
For fun:
Simpsons on impatience
Dilbert on risk analysis
Benefit-Cost Analysis of risking the destruction of the Earth
How much should we care about people 1,000 years from now?