Download or read book Pricing the Planet s Future written by Christian Gollier and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, the judge, the citizen, the politician, and the entrepreneur are concerned with the sustainability of our development.
Download or read book Discounting the Future written by Liliana Doganova and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering exploration of the defining traits and contradictions of our relationship to the future through the lens of discounting Forest fires, droughts, and rising sea levels beg a nagging question: have we lost our capacity to act on the future? Liliana Doganova’s book sheds new light on this anxious query. It argues that our relationship to the future has been trapped in the gears of a device called discounting. While its incidence remains little known, discounting has long been entrenched in market and policy practices, shaping the ways firms and governments look to the future and make decisions accordingly. Thus, a sociological account of discounting formulas has become urgent. Discounting means valuing things through the flows of costs and benefits that they are likely to generate in the future, with these future flows being literally dis-counted as they are translated in the present. How have we come to think of the future, and of valuation, in such terms? Building on original empirical research in the historical sociology of discounting, Doganova takes us to some of the sites and moments in which discounting took shape and gained momentum: valuation of European forests in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; economic theories devised in the early 1900s; debates over business strategies in the postwar era; investor-state disputes over the nationalization of natural resources; and drug development in the biopharmaceutical industry today. Weaving these threads together, the book pleads for an understanding of discounting as a political technology, and of the future as a contested domain.
Download or read book Futures written by Sandra Kemp and published by Oxford Twenty-First Century Ap. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Futures examines the relevance of futures studies to literary studies. It demonstrates how the growing interest in futures thinking is opening up multidisciplinary conversations and initiatives, examining historical and contemporary forms of futures knowledge, the methodologies and technologies of futures expertise, and the role played by different institutions on legitimising, deploying, and controlling anticipatory practices. Bringing together emerging perspectives on the future from diverse disciplinary perspectives including critical theory, design, anthropology, sociology, politics, and history, this book places the provocation of power at the heart of the book through an investigation of futures as both objects of science and objects of the human imagination, creativity, and will. A multidisciplinary team of contributors challenge and debate the varied ways in which futures are conjured and constructed, exploring issues as diverse as the utopian imagination, history and philosophy, literary and political manifestos, artefacts and design fictions, and forms of technological and financial forecasting, big data, climate modelling, and scenarios. The book positions the future as a question of power, of representations and counter-representations, and forms of struggle over future imaginaries. Forms of futures-making depend on complex processes of envisioning and embodiment. Each chapter investigates the critical vocabularies, genres, and representational methods - narrative, quantitative, visual, and material - of futures-making as deeply contested fields in cultural and social life.
Download or read book Uncertain Futures written by Jens Beckert and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-12 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncertain Futures considers how economic actors visualize the future and decide how to act in conditions of radical uncertainty. It starts from the premise that dynamic capitalist economies are characterized by relentless innovation and novelty and hence exhibit an indeterminacy that cannot be reduced to measurable risk. The organizing question then becomes how economic actors form expectations and make decisions despite the uncertainty they face. This edited volume lays the foundations for a new model of economic reasoning by showing how, in conditions of uncertainty, economic actors combine calculation with imaginaries and narratives to form fictional expectations that coordinate action and provide the confidence to act. It draws on groundbreaking research in economic sociology, economics, anthropology, and psychology to present theoretically grounded empirical case studies. These demonstrate how grand narratives, central bank forward guidance, economic forecasts, finance models, business plans, visions of technological futures, and new era stories influence behaviour and become instruments of power in markets and societies. The market impact of shared calculative devices, social narratives, and contingent imaginaries underlines the rationale for a new form of narrative economics.
Download or read book Discounting and Intergenerational Equity written by Paul R. Portney and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The full effects of decisions made today about many environmental policies -including climate change and nuclear waste- will not be felt for many years. For issues with long-term ramifications, analysts often employ discount rates to compare present and future costs and benefits. This is reasonable, and discounting has become a procedure that raises few objections. But are the methods appropriate for measuring costs and benefits for decisions that will have impacts 20 to 30 years from now the right ones to employ for a future that lies 200 to 300 years in the future? This landmark book argues that methods reasonable for measuring gains and losses for a generation into the future may not be appropriate when applied to a longer span of time. Paul Portney and John Weyant have assembled some of the world's foremost economists to reconsider the purpose, ethical implications, and application of discounting in light of recent research and current policy concerns. These experts note reasons why conventional calculations involved in discounting are undermined when considering costs and benefits in the distant future, including uncertainty about the values and preferences of future generations, and uncertainties about available technologies. Rather than simply disassemble current methodologies, the contributors examine innovations that will make discounting a more compelling tool for policy choices that influence the distant future. They discuss the combination of a high shout-term with a low long-term diescount rate, explore discounting according to more than one set of anticipated preferences for the future, and outline alternatives involving simultaneous consideration of valuation, discounting and political acceptability.
Download or read book Valuing Climate Damages written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-06-23 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The social cost of carbon (SC-CO2) is an economic metric intended to provide a comprehensive estimate of the net damages - that is, the monetized value of the net impacts, both negative and positive - from the global climate change that results from a small (1-metric ton) increase in carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions. Under Executive Orders regarding regulatory impact analysis and as required by a court ruling, the U.S. government has since 2008 used estimates of the SC-CO2 in federal rulemakings to value the costs and benefits associated with changes in CO2 emissions. In 2010, the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (IWG) developed a methodology for estimating the SC-CO2 across a range of assumptions about future socioeconomic and physical earth systems. Valuing Climate Changes examines potential approaches, along with their relative merits and challenges, for a comprehensive update to the current methodology. This publication also recommends near- and longer-term research priorities to ensure that the SC- CO2 estimates reflect the best available science.
Download or read book Consumer Perception of Product Risks and Benefits written by Gerard Emilien and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reflects the current thinking and research on how consumers’ perception of product risks and benefits affects their behavior. It provides the scientific, regulatory and industrial research community with a conceptual and methodological reference point for studies on consumer behavior and marketing. The contributions address various aspects of consumer psychology and behavior, risk perception and communication, marketing research strategies, as well as consumer product regulation. The book is divided into 4 parts: Product risks; Perception of product risks and benefits; Consumer behavior; Regulation and responsibility.
Download or read book The Unsettled Matter of Discounting the Future written by James Broughel and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper reviews complications associated with the two most popular discounting frameworks for benefit-cost analysis, and presents an alternative approach based on a social discount rate of zero. The first method, known as the social opportunity cost of capital approach, is problematic in that it assumes all benefits are just like cash, thereby giving too much weight to consumption relative to investment. The second method, the social rate of time preference approach, applies distributive weights to benefits and costs in a manner inconsistent with economic efficiency, and it assumes a social welfare function that is unlikely to correspond with society's actual preferences. This paper suggests modifying the social rate of time preference approach so that it relies on a social welfare function consistent with efficiency. This would seem to be equitable as well as wealth maximizing. But even if the approach recommended here is not preferred by economists, a reexamination of the standard approaches is long overdue.
Download or read book Climate Change and Discounting the Future written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some of the most important disagreements about how aggressively to respond to the threat of climate change turn on the choice of the discount rate. A high discount rate implies relatively modest and slow reductions; a low discount rate implies immediate and dramatic action. The debate between the two sides reflects a disagreement between the positivists, who argue for a market rate, and the ethicists, who urge that the positivist approach violates the duty of the present to the future. We argue that the positivists are largely right, and that the question of discounting should be separated from the question of the ethical duties of the present. Discounting is a means of taking account of opportunity costs, and a refusal to discount may well hurt, rather than help, future generations. Nonetheless, it is also possible that cost-benefit analysis with discounting will impose excessive harms on future generations. If so, the proper response is to make investments that will help those generations, not to refuse to discount. We also explore several questions on which the ethicists' legitimate objections require qualification of the positivists' arguments, justifying a low discount rate for climate change policy.
Download or read book Economics and the Future written by Pannell, D.J. and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2006-06-27 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economics and the Future tackles the discounting issue from a number of angles, ranging from relatively short-term private financial decisions, to very long-term public issues spanning generations. The authors present differing perspectives and original ideas in a style that remains accessible while addressing some of the more difficult questions about discounting in theory and practice. It reveals that the economic issues regarding time are embedded in a broader social, ethical and philosophical context.
Download or read book Can We Afford the Future written by Doctor Frank Ackerman and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2010-08-17 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to many scientists, climate change is a growing threat to life as we know it, requiring a large-scale, immediate response. According to many economists, climate change is a moderately important problem; the best policy is a slow, gradual start, to avoid spending too much. They can't both be right. In this book, Frank Ackerman offers a refreshing look at the economics of climate change, explaining how the arbitrary assumptions of conventional theories get in the way of understanding this urgent problem. The benefits of climate protection are vital but priceless, and hence often devalued in cost-benefit calculations. Preparation for the most predictable outcomes of global warming is less important than protection against the growing risk of catastrophic change; massive investment in new, low carbon technologies and industries should be thought of as life insurance for the planet. Ackerman makes an impassioned plea to construct a better economics, arguing that the solutions are affordable and the alternative is unthinkable. If we can't afford the future, what are we saving our money for? Can we Afford the Future? is part of The New Economics series, which uses the ideas behind a new, more human economics to provide a fresh way of looking at major contemporary issues.
Download or read book Discounting for Time and Risk in Energy Policy written by Robert C. Lind and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of theoretical papers, including contributions by Partha Dasgupta and three Nobel prize-winning economists: Kenneth Arrow, Amartya Sen, and Joseph Stiglitz. Originally published in 1982.
Download or read book Time Discounting and Future Generations written by Erhun Kula and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1997-07-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kula contends that conventional time-dependent theories in welfare economics are based on the unwarranted assumption that people live forever, an assumption that underpins the criteria for many decision-making activities and one that leads public sector policy makers to discriminate against future generations. It is seen in its most extreme in decision making on such long-term projects as nuclear power facilities, whose effects will be visited upon many future generations. How did this assumption gain currency and influence? Kula says, this oddity has been imposed by mathematical economists who now dominate the scene. Kula aggressively challenges these theories, which he alleges are untrue and unjust, provides an alternative method for discounting, and shows how its application can yield dramatically positive results. His book is thus a unique, important contribution to the theory and practice of decision making in public endeavors, intended not only for academics but equally for their practitioner colleagues in all parts of the world. Kula corrects the conventional theory by assuming societal models in which individuals are mortal and generations overlap. From this emerges a new discounting theory which leads to outcomes that are dramatically different from the old ones. The new criterion is called modified discounting, and can be readily applied to real-life projects. In Part I, Kula lays out his theory and constructs the new decision-making method, in which public policy makers accept the proposition that all generations ought to be treated equitably. Then, in Part II, he provides five case studies to illustrate his theory, each devoted to major public activities such as nuclear waste disposal, forestry, agriculture, and urban transport, and based on experiences in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.
Download or read book Man Made Climate Change written by Olav Hohmeyer and published by Physica. This book was released on 1999 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the Kyoto conference of the parties on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change once again underscored, man-made climate change has become one of the major challenges to our generation and many generations to come. Since scientific evidence on climate change can be seen as increasingly reliable, the focus of our attention has to turn more and more to the question of foreseeable damages and to possibilities to prevent and mitigate climate change. In other words, we need to analyse the economic aspects of man marle climate change and the policy options to prevent its most severe impacts. This book reports on the findings of an international workshop on these aspects of global climate change. It was organised by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim, Germany on March 6th and 7th 1997. In the light of the ongoing international policy-making process on climate change, we decided to publish the report after the Kyoto conference from December Ist to 10th, 1997, to include the results of the conference, which emphasise the importance of economic aspects and economic policy options when it comes to addressing the problern of man-made climate change. Thus, this book went to press in February 1998 the moment we received the official version of the Kyoto Protocol, which is reproduced in the annex.
Download or read book Discounting the Distant Future written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Stubborn Attachments written by Tyler Cowen and published by Stripe Press. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a bestselling author and economist, a contemporary moral case for economic growth—and a dose of inspiration and optimism about our future possibilities. Growth is good. Through history, economic growth, in particular, has alleviated human misery, improved human happiness and opportunity, and lengthened human lives. Wealthier societies are more stable, offer better living standards, produce better medicines, and ensure greater autonomy, greater fulfillment, and more sources of fun. If we want to continue on our trends of growth, and the overwhelmingly positive outcomes for societies that come with it, every individual must become more concerned with the welfare of those around us. So, how do we proceed? Tyler Cowen, in a culmination of 20 years of thinking and research, provides a roadmap for moving forward. In this new book, Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals, Cowen argues that our reason and common sense can help free us of the faulty ideas that hold us back as people and as a society. Stubborn Attachments, at its heart, makes the contemporary moral case for economic growth and delivers a great dose of inspiration and optimism about our future possibilities. As a means of practicing the altruism that Stubborn Attachments argues for, Tyler Cowen is donating all earnings from this book to a man he met in Ethiopia earlier this year with aspirations to open his own travel business.
Download or read book Valuing the Future written by G. M. Heal and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heal presents a coherent framework for understanding the Earth's future from an economic perspective and offers a dynamic new blueprint for comprehending sustainability.
