Dynamic public good provision under time preference heterogeneity: theory and applications to philanthropy
Philip Trammell (Global Priorities Institute and Department of Economics, University of Oxford)
GPI Working Paper No. 9-2021
I explore the implications of time preference heterogeneity for public good funding. I find that the assumption of a common discount rate is knife-edge: allowing for time preference heterogeneity produces substantially different funding behavior in equilibrium. In particular I find that, across a variety of circumstances, patient funders invest, rather than spend, the entirety of their resources for substantial lengths of time in equilibrium. I also find that the implications of this departure from the common-discount-rate case are economically significant, in that the patient payoff to spending in equilibrium, relative to that of spending according to an intermediate time preference rate, can grow arbitrarily large as a patient funder’s share of initial funding goes to zero. Finally, I discuss applications of these results to the timing of philanthropic spending, and to patient philanthropists’ willingness to pay to avoid legal disbursement minima.
Other working papers
Time Bias and Altruism – Leora Urim Sung (University College London)
We are typically near-future biased, being more concerned with our near future than our distant future. This near-future bias can be directed at others too, being more concerned with their near future than their distant future. In this paper, I argue that, because we discount the future in this way, beyond a certain point in time, we morally ought to be more concerned with the present well- being of others than with the well-being of our distant future selves. It follows that we morally ought to sacrifice…
The Hinge of History Hypothesis: Reply to MacAskill – Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Some believe that the current era is uniquely important with respect to how well the rest of human history goes. Following Parfit, call this the Hinge of History Hypothesis. Recently, MacAskill has argued that our era is actually very unlikely to be especially influential in the way asserted by the Hinge of History Hypothesis. I respond to MacAskill, pointing to important unresolved ambiguities in his proposed definition of what it means for a time to be influential and criticizing the two arguments…
Egyptology and Fanaticism – Hayden Wilkinson (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Various decision theories share a troubling implication. They imply that, for any finite amount of value, it would be better to wager it all for a vanishingly small probability of some greater value. Counterintuitive as it might be, this fanaticism has seemingly compelling independent arguments in its favour. In this paper, I consider perhaps the most prima facie compelling such argument: an Egyptology argument (an analogue of the Egyptology argument from population ethics). …