Discounting for Intergenerational Investments: Individual Discount Rate for Close and Remote Beneficiaries

Abstract

The paper aims to diagnose whether it is justified in investment appraisal to apply a separate treatment (in terms of the value of the discount rate) for close-in-time versus distant-in-time project effects as well as for effects applying to close-in-space versus distant-in-space beneficiaries. The analysis rests on a survey asking Polish citizens to state their indifference points between lives saved now and in the future (with delays from 10 to 150 years to capture temporal distance) for two separate projects: saving lives in Poland (geographically close) and in Latvia (geographically remote). The findings suggest that while time distance can be perceived as a rationale to apply separate (lower) DRs which increase the weight of time-distant impacts in project’s NPV, outcomes distant in space should be treated as equally important to geographically close impacts, thus extending the analysis beyond national borders.