In this lecture Partha Dasgupta will begin with a discussion of theories of intergenerational justice. He will then relate them to the idea of social discount rates as applied to the evaluation of policies that have implications for generations in the deep future. He will argue that those rates are neither ethical primitives nor observable as market rates of interest, but are only derivable from a society’s conception of intergenerational justice allied to economic forecasts. 

Professor Dasgupta will apply those ideas to the welfare economics of climate change and comment on the works of William Cline, William Nordhaus, and Nicholas Stern.

Introduction by Carlo Carraro, FEEM and University of Venice