a r t i c l e i n f o Context: Price discounts are common retail promotional tools that are defined by their size and duration. Consumers possess a general schema in which they believe that retailers are motivated to associate larger price discounts with shorter durations and smaller price discounts with longer durations. However, factors influencing promotion management frequently lead retaile...

The assessment of investment projects by the net present value method presupposes that the discount rate and the project deadline are known. In literature, however, it is commonly accepted that generally the discount rate cannot be determined with sufficient accuracy. Moreover, the project deadline is generally subject to negotiations. In this paper, we develop a procedure for computing the pro...

What discount rate should be applied to social investments? It is standard to use the market interest rate, thereby respecting private preferences. We show that application of this “revealed preference” criterion rests on faith, not logic. It is justified only if preferences over all choices, including past choices, are time invariant. The conditions for this to be true are stringent. Under mor...

BACKGROUND The present study aimed to provide better insight on methodological issues related to time preference studies, and to estimate private and social discount rates, using a rigorous systematic review and meta-analysis. METHODS We searched PubMed, EMBASE and Proquest databases in June 2013. All studies had estimated private and social time preference rates for health outcomes through s...

Alternative policy options available to northern Benguela fisheries managers were explored using Ecopath with Ecosim. Scenarios were tested for optimizing the discounted profit from the fisheries in the ecosystem, maximizing the jobs that can be provided by the fisheries, maximizing a measure of ecosystem status, and analyzing tradeoffs between these management options. Additionally, two differ...

We elicit measures of individual discount rates from a representative sample of the Danish population and test two substantive hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that smokers have higher individual discount rates than non-smokers. The second hypothesis is that smokers are more likely to have time inconsistent preferences than non-smokers, where time inconsistency is indicated by a hyperbolic d...

In recessions, the stock market falls more than in proportion to corporate profit. The discount rate implicit in the stock market rises. All types of investment fall, including employers’ investment in job creation. According to the leading view of unemployment—the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model—when the incentive for job creation rises, the labor market tightens and unemployment falls. Emp...