Estimating Individual Discount Rates in Denmark: A Field Experiment

摘要

We demonstrate that it is possible to elicit discount rates from individuals in the field using real economic commitments, and that those discount rates are in an a priori plausible range. There are variations in discount rates across some sociodemographic characteristics of the Danish population, implying that intertemporal welfare evaluations for those household groups should take these differences into account. On the other hand, elicited discount rates do not vary with respect to the time horizon used here beyond one year, consistent with the use of constant discount rates for given household types for those horizons.