Discounting by committee
研究一系列委员会如何决定公共资产消费的动态社会选择问题，发现功利主义委员会会导致时间不一致和低效，而多数投票可能改善消费计划，并讨论了社会贴现率选择的应用。
We study a dynamic social choice problem in which a sequence of committees must decide how to consume a public asset. A committee convened at time t decides on consumption at t, accounting for the behaviour of future committees. Committee members disagree about the appropriate value of the pure rate of time preference, but must nevertheless reach a decision. If each committee aggregates its members' preferences in a utilitarian manner, the collective preferences of successive committees will be time inconsistent, and they will implement inefficient consumption plans. If however committees decide on the level of consumption by a majoritarian vote in each period, they may improve on the consumption plans implemented by utilitarian committees. Using a simple model, we show that this occurs in empirically plausible cases. Application to the problem of choosing the social discount rate is discussed.