Eli, >> Does anyone know of anyplace with an intelligent discussion of the >> discount rate issue.
My previous reply dismissing Wikipedia was wrong. The discount rate that Stern was discussing is that described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discount_rate But re-reading what you asked, viz an intelligent discussion, then I think you need look no further than Kooti's post, especially: > I think it is reasonable that future uncertain profit should be > discounted. But I do not think it reasonable that future uncertain > loss or cost should be discounted in the same way. It seems that > mainstream economists think that profit and loss are the same thing > just with the opposite signs, so they can be added algebraically. It is > against my intuition. But there is another problem. We do not know what the costs they wish to discount will be. Nor do we know whether there will be a slow change to a 2C rise, or a rapid change to 10C. Nor do we know what the costs of either of those scenarios would be. Anyway, in future I will restrict my comments to describing what the future scenarios might be and leave the discounting of them to the practioners of the 'dismal science'. Cheers, Alastair. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
