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
Evolutionary debunking and value alignment – Michael T. Dale (Hampden-Sydney College) and Bradford Saad (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
This paper examines the bearing of evolutionary debunking arguments—which use the evolutionary origins of values to challenge their epistemic credentials—on the alignment problem, i.e. the problem of ensuring that highly capable AI systems are properly aligned with values. Since evolutionary debunking arguments are among the best empirically-motivated arguments that recommend changes in values, it is unsurprising that they are relevant to the alignment problem. However, how evolutionary debunking arguments…
Strong longtermism and the challenge from anti-aggregative moral views – Karri Heikkinen (University College London)
Greaves and MacAskill (2019) argue for strong longtermism, according to which, in a wide class of decision situations, the option that is ex ante best, and the one we ex ante ought to choose, is the option that makes the very long-run future go best. One important aspect of their argument is the claim that strong longtermism is compatible with a wide range of ethical assumptions, including plausible non-consequentialist views. In this essay, I challenge this claim…
Moral uncertainty and public justification – Jacob Barrett (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford) and Andreas T Schmidt (University of Groningen)
Moral uncertainty and disagreement pervade our lives. Yet we still need to make decisions and act, both in individual and political contexts. So, what should we do? The moral uncertainty approach provides a theory of what individuals morally ought to do when they are uncertain about morality…