Not available to order
Publication date:
29 July 2016Length of book:
252 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781498522519
Cost-Benefit Analysis: Theory and Application provides the theoretical foundation for a general framework within which costs and benefits are identified and assessed from a societal perspective. With a thorough coverage of cost-benefit concepts and their underlying theory, the volume carries the reader through the steps of a typical evaluation process, including the identification, measurement, and comparison of costs and benefits, and project selection. Topics include alternative measures of welfare change, such as the concepts of consumer surplus and compensating and equivalent variation measures, shadow pricing, nonmarket valuation techniques of contingent valuation and discrete choice experiment, perspectives on what constitutes a theoretically acceptable discount rate, the social rate of time preference, income distribution, and much more. The book also focuses on real-world applications of cost-benefit analysis in two closely related areas—environment and health care—followed by an examination of the current state of the art in cost-benefit analysis as practiced by international agencies.
Benefit-Cost analysis is one of the most powerful economic tools for improving efficiency in government spending, but it is too little known and understood by both citizens and government decision-makers. In this second edition of his important book, Tevfik Nas provides a highly readable overview of the theory and method of selecting public investments that provide the largest return for taxpayers and the general population. The applications are particularly useful as illustrations of the potential of the benefit-cost approach.