Social discounting under uncertainty: A cross country comparison
Name:
Cameron Hepburn
Title, organisation:
Dr, London School of Economics and Oxford University
E-mail/phone:
c.j.hepburn@lse.ac.uk,+44 207 106 1229
Summary:
My presentation will be practical and policy-focussed. I will review how uncertainty has been (and could be) incorporated into
social discounting by various national governments. I will consider this in the wider context of the analytical apparatus used
to support good policy decisions by government. The presentation will cover (i) a reminder of the practical role of CBA in
government decision-making; (ii) the conceptual basis for social discounting; (iii) the use of social discounting in government
decisions; (iv) a snapshot of practices across OECD countries, including attempts to incorporate uncertainty; (v) discounting
in the Stern Review and its impact on the UK government; (vi) discounting in the developing country context.
Biography:
Dr Cameron Hepburn is an economist specialising in environmental and public policy. He holds Fellowships at the LSE and
Oxford University. He was educated at Melbourne University in Law and Chemical Engineering, and earned his doctorate in
economics from Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar).
He is actively involved in public policy as a member of the DECC Secretary of State's Economics Advisory Group, the
DEFRA Academic Panel and as a founder of Vivid Economics. He contributed two background research papers to the Stern
Review on the Economics of Climate Change.
Suggested
readings:
Hepburn, C. (2007) Use of Discount Rates in the Estimation of the Costs of Inaction with Respect to Selected Environmental
Concerns, OECD Environment Directorate, ENV/EPOC/WPNEP(2006)13/FINAL.
Hepburn, C., Koundouri, P., Panopoulou, E., Pantelidis, T. (2009) Social discounting under uncertainty: a cross country
comparison. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 57, 140-150.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069608000703
Stern, N., (2007), The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. Cambridge University Press