IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jageco/v42y1991i1p77-85.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do High Discount Rates Destroy Tropical Forests

Author

Listed:
  • C. Price

Abstract

The short‐term viewpoint implicit in high discount rates seems to favour immediate forest exploitation rather than conservation for perpetual benefits. However, the value of logging revenues increases with a lower discount rate, because of the greater weighting given to investible funds. Thus, in several theoretical models, net present value of logging increases as discount rate is lowered. In practice, however, long‐term costs of logging may also incur the weighting appropriate to investment funds; reinvestment of logging revenues may not actually take place; and lower discount rates may be appropriate for costs but not revenues. These circumstances favour conservation, the more so at lower discount rates.

Suggested Citation

  • C. Price, 1991. "Do High Discount Rates Destroy Tropical Forests," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(1), pages 77-85, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jageco:v:42:y:1991:i:1:p:77-85
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-9552.1991.tb00334.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-9552.1991.tb00334.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1477-9552.1991.tb00334.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen A. Marglin, 1963. "The Opportunity Costs of Public Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 77(2), pages 274-289.
    2. Anthony C. Fisher & John V. Krutilla, 1975. "Resource Conservation, Environmental Preservation, and the Rate of Discount," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 89(3), pages 358-370.
    3. William F. Hyde, 1981. "Timber Economics in the Rockies: Efficiency and Management Options," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(4), pages 630-638.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Price, Colin, 2010. "Low discount rates and insignificant environmental values," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 1895-1903, August.
    2. Ruttan, Vernon W., 1991. "Sustainable Growth In Agricultural Production: Poetry, Policy And Science," Staff Papers 13601, University of Minnesota, Department of Applied Economics.
    3. Thomas Sterner, 1994. "Discounting in a world of limited growth," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 4(5), pages 527-534, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Colin, Price, 2011. "Optimal rotation with declining discount rate," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 307-318, August.
    2. Price, Colin, 2010. "Low discount rates and insignificant environmental values," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 1895-1903, August.
    3. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    4. Muhammad Altaf & Wesam Salah Alaloul & Muhammad Ali Musarat & Abdul Hannan Qureshi, 2023. "Life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) of construction projects: sustainability perspective," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 25(11), pages 12071-12118, November.
    5. Richard G. Newell & William A. Pizer & Brian C. Prest, 2024. "The Shadow Price of Capital: Accounting for Capital Displacement in Benefit-Cost Analysis," Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 5(1), pages 49-69.
    6. Defrancesco, Edi & Gatto, Paola & Rosato, Paolo, 2014. "A ‘component-based’ approach to discounting for natural resource damage assessment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 1-9.
    7. Kögel, Tomas, 2009. "On the Relation between Dual-Rate Discounting and Substitutability," Economics Discussion Papers 2009-10, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    8. Geoffrey Heal, 2008. "Climate Economics: A Meta-Review and Some Suggestions," NBER Working Papers 13927, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Li, Qingran & Pizer, William A., 2021. "Use of the consumption discount rate for public policy over the distant future," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    10. Burgess, David F., 2013. "Reconciling alternative views about the appropriate social discount rate," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 9-17.
    11. Jack Hirshleifer, 1989. "Investment Decision Criteria - Public Decisions," UCLA Economics Working Papers 571, UCLA Department of Economics.
    12. Aline Chiabai & Ibon Galarraga & Anil Markandya & Unai Pascual, 2013. "The Equivalency Principle for Discounting the Value of Natural Assets: An Application to an Investment Project in the Basque Coast," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 56(4), pages 535-550, December.
    13. Bell, Frederick W., 1969. "Benefit-Cost Analysis As Applied to Commercial Fisheries Programs," Working Papers 233018, United States Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, Division of Economic Research.
    14. Price, Colin, 2017. "Optimal rotation with differently-discounted benefit streams," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 1-8.
    15. Terry F. Buss & Laura C. Yancer, 1999. "Cost-Benefit Analysis: A Normative Perspective," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 13(1), pages 29-37, February.
    16. Zerbe, Richard, 2023. "A foundation for benefit-cost analysis," MPRA Paper 121294, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Jun 2024.
    17. Kögel, Tomas, 2011. "On the Relation between Discounting of Climate Change and Edgeworth-Pareto Substitutability," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-12.
    18. Hans-Werner Sinn, 2007. "Pareto Optimality in the Extraction of Fossil Fuels and the Greenhouse Effect: A Note," NBER Working Papers 13453, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Zhu, Xueqin & Smulders, Sjak & de Zeeuw, Aart, 2019. "Discounting in the presence of scarce ecosystem services," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    20. Liqun Liu & Andrew J. Rettenmaier & Thomas R. Saving, 2004. "A Generalized Approach to Multigeneration Project Evaluation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 71(2), pages 377-396, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jageco:v:42:y:1991:i:1:p:77-85. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-857X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.