Recent Advances in Discounting: Implications for Forest Economics.

Discounting has played an important role in forestry economics because harvesting cycles are often much longer than project cycles for other investments. For high forests, for instance, most income is derived from thinning and felling up to 80 (sycamore and ash) or even 120 years (oak) after plantin...

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Main Authors: Hepburn, C, Koundouri, P
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2007
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author Hepburn, C
Koundouri, P
author_facet Hepburn, C
Koundouri, P
author_sort Hepburn, C
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description Discounting has played an important role in forestry economics because harvesting cycles are often much longer than project cycles for other investments. For high forests, for instance, most income is derived from thinning and felling up to 80 (sycamore and ash) or even 120 years (oak) after planting. Cost-benefit analysis of such long-term investments is enormously sensitive to the discount rate. Using conventional exponential discounting can generate recommendations that appear contrary to sustainability, if not commonsense. This paper reviews some recent advances in discounting theory, which suggests that social discount rates should decline over time, and applies this theory to three case studies to tease out the implications for forestry economics.
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spelling oxford-uuid:6505ac04-a8cd-4f07-adce-875d397a7dca2022-03-26T18:22:46ZRecent Advances in Discounting: Implications for Forest Economics.Journal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:6505ac04-a8cd-4f07-adce-875d397a7dcaEnglishDepartment of Economics - ePrintsElsevier2007Hepburn, CKoundouri, PDiscounting has played an important role in forestry economics because harvesting cycles are often much longer than project cycles for other investments. For high forests, for instance, most income is derived from thinning and felling up to 80 (sycamore and ash) or even 120 years (oak) after planting. Cost-benefit analysis of such long-term investments is enormously sensitive to the discount rate. Using conventional exponential discounting can generate recommendations that appear contrary to sustainability, if not commonsense. This paper reviews some recent advances in discounting theory, which suggests that social discount rates should decline over time, and applies this theory to three case studies to tease out the implications for forestry economics.
spellingShingle Hepburn, C
Koundouri, P
Recent Advances in Discounting: Implications for Forest Economics.
title Recent Advances in Discounting: Implications for Forest Economics.
title_full Recent Advances in Discounting: Implications for Forest Economics.
title_fullStr Recent Advances in Discounting: Implications for Forest Economics.
title_full_unstemmed Recent Advances in Discounting: Implications for Forest Economics.
title_short Recent Advances in Discounting: Implications for Forest Economics.
title_sort recent advances in discounting implications for forest economics
work_keys_str_mv AT hepburnc recentadvancesindiscountingimplicationsforforesteconomics
AT koundourip recentadvancesindiscountingimplicationsforforesteconomics