Properties of the Social Discount Rate in a Benthamite Framework with Heterogeneous Degrees of Impatience
推导了当受影响人群具有异质性不耐程度时，公共项目应使用的贴现率的性质，发现社交贴现率随时间下降、低于人口平均贴现率，并收敛于最耐心个体的贴现率。
This paper derives the properties of the discount rate that should be applied to a public-sector project when the affected population has heterogeneous degrees of impatience. We show that, for any distribution of discount rates, the social discount rate has the following properties: it decreases over time, it is lower than the average of the discount rates in the population, and it converges to the discount rate of the most patient individual in the economy. These properties hold for both constant and decreasing individual discount rates. Finally, we evaluate how changes in the distribution of individual discount rates affect the social discount rate.