| Abstract
| - Individuals' time preferences for saving lives are measuredin six less developed countries in Africa, Eastern Europe,and Asia using a stated-preference method. The resultsindicate that individuals' discount rates differ significantlyby country, but they are much higher than those estimatedfor samples in the United States and Western Europe.Also, respondents' time preferences for saving lives arecharacterized by a nonconstant exponential discount function.We conclude that the discounting practices currentlyused in standard economic analyses of development projectsare poor representations of individuals' actual timepreferences.
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