Discounting the Future?

this post is written with Béatrice Cherrier (Research Director, CNRS-ENSAE / CREST) The first lessons in insurance and financial mathematics address discounting and the value of time, borrowing Christian Gollier’s expression, because insurers must account for this temporal aspect in medium-term annuity calculations. But do these discounting calculations, used for centuries to reflect individual decisions (of policyholders, investors, companies), still make sense when used to guide public pol...