Study on Estimation of the Appropriate Social Discount Rate for Evaluating Public Investment Project

When the cost-benefit analysis is applied for social discount rate(SDR), the choice of SDR to be used in analysis is critical. One of the important issues when public investment project evaluate what is the SDR theory, so there have studied about SDR and no exact answer it so far. In this study, there are three of SDR theories that be estimated social time preference rate, social investment returns and the weighted average method from 1990s, 2000 to 2003 and 2004 to 2008.. First, social time preference method computes consumer's interest rate and the model of Pearce and Ulph(1999). Second, social investment returns method computes private returns of capital. Third, the weighted average method computes the model of Squire, L., Herman G. van der Tak(1975) and private consumption expense and the private investment expense. SDR is estimated in the rage between 2.4% and 3.9% from 2004 to 2008. It is not appropriate that the interest rate was unstable. But it is consider for social equity from present to future generations. Considering this things, downward need to the value of current SDR 5.5%.