Abstract

CORREA RESTREPO, Francisco. Estimation of the environmental discount rate for Colombia. Lect. Econ. [online]. 2008, n.69, pp.141-162. ISSN 0120-2596.

The main purpose of this article is to describe and apply a methodology to estimate the discount rate on long-term projects, such as those related to environmental conservation and global climate change, for Colombia. The applied methodology is known as gamma discount. For the application of this method, a survey of 120 Colombian economists was conducted. This yielded a much smaller discount rate than the social rate of discount typically used in the economic evaluation of domestic long-term projects. Additionally, the obtained estimations allow verifying the decline in time of such a discount rate.

Keywords : discount rate; intertemporal preferences; environmental impacts; cost-benefit analysis; uncertainty.

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