Replication data for: Discounting Disentangled

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Moritz A. Drupp; Mark C. Freeman; Ben Groom; Frikk Nesje

Version: View help for Version V1

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data			10/26/2021 10:34:AM
LICENSE.txt	text/plain	14.6 KB	10/13/2019 01:36:AM

Project Citation:

Drupp, Moritz A., Freeman, Mark C., Groom, Ben, and Nesje, Frikk. Replication data for: Discounting Disentangled. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2018. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2019-10-13. https://doi.org/10.3886/E114692V1

Project Description

Summary: The economic values of investing in long-term public projects are highly sensitive to the social discount rate (SDR). We surveyed over 200 experts to disentangle disagreement on the risk-free SDR into its component parts, including pure time preference, the wealth effect and return to capital. We show that the majority of experts do not follow the simple Ramsey Rule, a widely-used theoretical discounting framework, when recommending SDRs. Despite disagreement on discounting procedures and point values, we obtain a surprising degree of consensus among experts, with more than three-quarters finding the median risk-free SDR of 2 percent acceptable.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Expert Opinions; Social Discount Rate; Simple Ramsey Rule; Disagreement; Project Appraisal

JEL Classification:
      C83 Survey Methods; Sampling Methods
      D61 Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
      D82 Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
      H43 Project Evaluation; Social Discount Rate
      Q58 Environmental Economics: Government Policy

Geographic Coverage: Global

Time Period(s): 2014 – 2014

Universe: Because our survey aimed at disentangling the determits of the long-term Social Discount Rate, we restricted our sample to scholars who have been involved with these complex issues. For the purposes of this paper, an individual is deemed to be a potential 'expert' if he or she is a (co-)author of at least one pertinent publication in the field of (social) discounting in a leading economics journal. A publication is deemed to be 'pertinent' if it was published between January 2000 and March 2014 and, according to the Google Scholar engine, included at least one of the terms 'social discounting', 'social discount rate' or 'social discount factor'. We correct for scholars with multiple publications, and discarding papers that did not pass a weak relevancy test.

Data Type(s): survey data

Methodology

Unit(s) of Observation: Publication-based Experts,

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Published Versions

V1 [2019-10-13]

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DDI 2.5

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