8 The available evidence suggests the elasticity of the marginal utility of consumption (µ) is around 1.4 This implies that a marginal increment in consumption to a generation that has twice the consumption of the current generation will reduce the utility by half.
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4 Pearce and Ulph (1995) estimate a range from 0.7 to 1.5 with 1.0 being considered defensible; Cowell and Gardiner (1999) estimate µ as being just below or just above one; OXERA (2002) estimate a range from 0.8 to 1.1.