Download 20.05 Summary, biography and suggested readings

Investment Policy for Time-Inconsistent Discounters
Name:
Bård Harstad
Title, organisation:
Professor, University of Oslo
E-mail/phone:
Summary:
[email protected], +47 22 85 60 52
Abstract:
There is plenty of empirical evidence that people have time-inconsistent preferences: when comparing utilities in period t and
t+1, the discount factors tend to grow in t. This implies that politicians, as well as voters, prefer to invest, save, or consume in
a sustainable way, tomorrow, but not today. This paper derives the implications for public investment policies, investmenttaxes/subsidies, and the socially optimal discount factor.
Biography:
Bård Harstad is professor of economics at the University of Oslo (UIO). He holds a PhD from the Stockholm University
(IIES). His academic interests are political economics, public economics, contract theory and environmental economics. Prior
to UIO he held positions at the National Bureau of Economic research, Kellogg school of Management and Norwegian
Institute of international affairs, amongst others.
Suggested
readings:
3 related papers:
Laibson, David. 1997. "Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting."
Quarterly Journal of Economics 112(2): 443-477.
http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/112/2/443.abstract
Temptation and Taxation (Per Krusell, Burhanettin Kuruscu, Anthony Smith), Econometrica, 2010.
http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/ecta8611.pdf
"Consumption-Savings Decisions with Quasi-Geometric Discounting"(Per Krusell and Anthony Smith). Econometrica, 71
(2003).
http://people.su.se/~pkrus/ref_pub/Consumption-savings.pdf