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1 Work 57 Membros 1 Review

Obras de Anthony E. Boardman

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Conhecimento Comum

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male

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The Utility of Cost-Benefit Analysis: An Introductory, Theory-Oriented Text
By selecting public projects with the highest attainable net present value, returns on such undertakings, it is hoped, can be maximized. In the parlance of economics, a proposed project or policy must be established to be Pareto-improving, that is, a scheme should make at least one individual better off without making any other individual worse off. To evaluate the desirability of public projects in the most objective manner possible, an analyst can resort to cost-benefit analysis, a rigorous analytical exercise which involves balancing the expected costs of a project against the expected benefits. By expressing the returns of a publicly-funded project in terms of the net present value obtained through cost-benefit analysis, public officials and politicians can thus approach their constituents with a more rational basis for spending public funds in a certain project.

Initiating readers into the esoteric world of CBA, “Cost-Benefit Analysis: Concepts and Practice” is primarily aimed at two audiences: graduate students and undergraduates in public administration programs, and policy analysts and policymakers wishing to be acquainted with the workings of cost-benefit analysis and how it could be of assistance in decision-making in a public finance setting. The textbook begins with a typical introduction to cost-benefit analysis and an overview of the process, with the authors being careful to highlight at the outset that the analytical procedure itself is not immune to political interference. One also learns that cost-benefit analysis, however appealing it may be because of its empirical, reductionist approach to policy analysis, is prone to estimation error due to a variety of reasons. The authors candidly admit that the heuristics of CBA is fraught with missteps in the hands of even the most experienced analysts. Among other things, the computational tractability of cost-benefit analysis is affected by the need to identify as accurately as practicable the so-called impacts (the attributable benefits and accompanying costs) of a project or policy and CBA’s requirement to quantify the said impacts over the life of the project.

For a reader to fully appreciate the text, it is important to recognize what it is and what it is not. It is written to provide a theoretical foundation for the employment of cost-benefit analysis in the hope that decision-making in a public policy setting would be based on a formalized, rigorous analytical regime. The authors do an admirable job of making the underlying principles of cost-benefit analysis as comprehensible as possible to its immediate audience, but for those already familiar with the basics and wishing to be ‘up to speed’ as quickly as possible in order to be able to use CBA in the workplace, the book is not written to confer on a diligent reader proficiency in conducting cost-benefit analysis. CBA textbooks with a more practical, solution-focused orientation should be consulted if one wishes to be instructed in the detailed mechanics of the analytical procedure first-hand. (This review refers to the second edition of the textbook.)
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Marcado
melvinsico | Aug 17, 2009 |

Estatísticas

Obras
1
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57
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#287,973
Avaliação
5.0
Resenhas
1
ISBNs
13

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