Among the ethical objections to intergenerational impartiality is the violation of consumer
sovereignty given that individuals are impatient. We accommodate that concern by
distinguishing intra-and inter-generational discounting in an OLG model suitable for
analyzing sustainability issues. Under the assumption of constant elasticity of marginal
felicity, the optimum trajectory of aggregate consumption is guided, via the Ramsey
condition, by the intergenerational discount rate but not the personal discount rate. In an …