Intertemporal Equity, Discounting, and Economic Efficiency in Water Policy Evaluation
Intertemporal Equity, Discounting, and Economic Efficiency in Water Policy Evaluation
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水政策评估中的跨期公平、贴现和经济效率
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发表时间：
1997
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通讯作者：
R. Lind
中科院分区：
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作者：
R. Lind
本文讨论了如何纳入全球气候变化可能会影响用于评估水资源计划和项目的贴现程序。今天，管理水资源规划和评估的主要文件是水资源理事会于1983年通过的原则和准则。问题是，是否需要根据IPCC报告中关于跨期公平、贴现和经济效率的章节，在贴现和贴现率选择方面对宝洁公司和相关规划规则进行修订，以应对与潜在气候变化相关的不断变化的条件（IPCC，1996 c，ch.4）.第2节阐述了成本效益分析的基本方法，并追溯了与选择贴现率有关的问题的发展。必须在成本效益分析的理论基础，特别是卡尔多-希克斯报酬检验的范围内考虑贴现率问题。第3节阐述了政府间气候变化专门委员会关于贴现的章节（IPCC，1996 c，ch.4）所描述的选择贴现率的描述性方法与规定性方法。它研究了经济学家用来支持评估公共项目的贴现率应低于私人投资的边际回报率的论点的基本原理。它还描述了使用较低费率对包括水项目在内的替代公共项目的经济评估带来的挑战。第4节讨论了与全球变暖和贴现有关的代际公平问题，并讨论了通过降低或提高贴现率可以在多大程度上解决代际公平问题。第6节简要讨论了水资源规划过程是否应该扩展多目标框架，以纳入一个完整的多目标标准功能，包括在修订后的P&G的未来的问题。本文件的最后一节阐述了从这一分析以及IPCC报告（IPCC，1996 a ch.4）关于代际公平、折扣和经济效率的章节中得出的主要结论，以供宝洁公司的规划和评估程序参考。由于有关贴现率的悬而未决的问题的复杂性和应用程序的实际困难，旨在捕捉所有这些复杂性的贴现规则，笔者认为，将提高水资源决策的整体效率。无论本文所描述的程序最终被选择，目前的贴现规则将不得不修改。
This paper addresses how the inclusion of global climate change may affect the discounting procedures used to evaluate water resources programs and projects. The primary document governing water resource planning and evaluation today is the Principles and Guidelines (P&G) adopted by the Water Resource Council in 1983. The issue is whether the P&G and related planning rules needs to be revised with regard to discounting and the choice of the discount rate in response to changing conditions associated with potential climate change and in light of the chapter on intertemporal equity, discounting, and economic efficiency from the report by the IPCC (IPCC, 1996c, ch. 4).Section 2 lays out the basic methodology of cost-benefit analysis and traces the development of issues pertaining to the choice of the discount rate. It is important to consider the discount rate issue in the context of the theoretical foundations of cost-benefit analysis and in particular, the Kaldor-Hicks compensation test. Section 3 sets out what the IPCC chapter on discounting (IPCC, 1996c, ch. 4) describes as the descriptive approach versus the prescriptive approach to choosing a discount rate. It examines the rationales which economists use to support the argument that the discount rate for evaluating public projects should be lower than the marginal rate of return on private investment. It also describes the challenges that using a lower rate poses for the economic evaluation of alternative public projects including water projects. Section 4 addresses the issue of intergenerational equity as it relates to global warming and to discounting and discusses the extent to which issues of intergenerational equity can be accounted for by lowering or raising the discount rate.Section 5 discusses the importance of dynamic flexibility. Section 6 briefly addresses the question of whether the water resources planning process should extend the multiobjective framework to incorporate a full multiobjective criterion function for inclusion in a revised P&G for the future. The final section of the paper sets forth the major conclusions to be drawn from this analysis and from the chapter on intergenerational equity, discounting, and economic efficiency of the IPCC report (IPCC, 1996a ch. 4) for the planning and evaluation procedures in the P&G. Because of the complexity of the outstanding issues regarding the discount rate and of the practical difficulty of applying procedures designed to capture all of these complexities a discounting rule is proposed that this writer believes will improve the overall efficiency of water resource decisions. Whichever procedure described in this paper is finally chosen, the current discounting rule will have to be revised.