IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/ecnphi/v33y2017i03p441-473_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Pure Time Preference In Intertemporal Welfare Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Kelleher, J. Paul

Abstract

Several areas of welfare economics seek to evaluate states of affairs as a function of interpersonally comparable individual utilities. The aim is to map each state of affairs onto a vector of individual utilities, and then to produce an ordering of these vectors that can be represented by a mathematical function assigning a real number to each. When this approach is used in intertemporal contexts, a central theoretical question concerns the rate of pure time preference, i.e. the evaluative weight to be applied to utility coming at different times. This article criticizes the standard philosophical account of pure time preference, arguing that it ascribes to economists a methodological commitment they need not accept. The article then evaluates three further objections to pure time preference, concluding that it might still be defensible under certain circumstances. I close by articulating a final argument that, if sound, would constitute a decisive objection to pure time preference as it currently figures in much intertemporal welfare economics.

Suggested Citation

  • Kelleher, J. Paul, 2017. "Pure Time Preference In Intertemporal Welfare Economics," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(3), pages 441-473, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:ecnphi:v:33:y:2017:i:03:p:441-473_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0266267117000074/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Maya Eden, 2023. "The Cross‐Sectional Implications of the Social Discount Rate," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(6), pages 2065-2088, November.
    2. Ramiro de Ávila Peres, 2024. "Social Discounting and the Tragedy of the Horizon: from the Stern-Nordhaus debate to target-consistent prices," Working Papers Series 593, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
    3. Frikk Nesje & Moritz A. Drupp & Mark C. Freeman & Ben Groom, 2022. "Philosophers and Economists Can Agree on the Intergenerational Discount Rate and Climate Policy Paths," CESifo Working Paper Series 9930, CESifo.

    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:cup:ecnphi:v:33:y:2017:i:03:p:441-473_00. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/eap .

    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.