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Time Discounting and of the Cost of Capital in Government
Author(s) -
SPACKMAN MICHAEL
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
fiscal studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.63
H-Index - 40
eISSN - 1475-5890
pISSN - 0143-5671
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-5890.2004.tb00547.x
Subject(s) - discounting , economics , government (linguistics) , capital (architecture) , capital market , time preference , public economics , microeconomics , financial economics , finance , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology , history
The literature on public sector discounting has brought important insights, but there remain wide differences on some fundamental issues. This paper reviews the main conflicts and the reasons underlying them. It suggests practical procedures for discounting in government which are consistent with most of the literature but not with the ‘efficient market’ thesis that financial markets provide all the information needed to define these procedures.