This concise yet comprehensive introduction aims to outline the core principles of Cost–Benefit Analysis (CBA), laying them out in an accessible manner with minimum technical detail. The applied nature of the subject is emphasized by showing how each of the principles is applied to an actual public policy intervention, covering transport, education, health and the environment. Robert Brent demonstrates how economic efficiency and equity can be combined as social objectives to help determine decisions that can increase satisfaction for all.

This thoroughly updated second edition incorporates key ideas and discussions on issues such as wider economic impacts, the treatment of risk, and the importance of institutional arrangements in ensuring the correct use of technique. Ginés de Rus considers whether public decisions, such as investing in high-speed rail links, privatizing a public enterprise or protecting a natural area, may improve social welfare.

Teaching Benefit-Cost Analysis provides detail and inspiration that extends and clarifies standard textbooks. Each short, self-contained module includes guidance to additional sources while many also provide class exercises. Classes for advanced undergraduates, practitioners, or Masters students could especially apply these tools of the trade.

This book shows that cost-benefit analysis does not need to be an esoteric and arcane subject. In a step-by-step presentation, with little more than introductory microeconomics, some clear reasoning, and many examples, Professor Ginés De Rus presents the essentials of applied welfare economics concepts. Any undergraduate student or practitioner who wants to start his training in CBA should consider reading this text.

This Handbook provides an authoritative overview of current research in the field of cost-benefit analysis and is designed as a starting point for those interested in undertaking advanced research. The Handbook contains major contributions to the development of the field, focussing on standard microeconomic policy evaluations, the relatively neglected area of macroeconomic policy and its integration into a formal CBA framework, and dynamic considerations in CBA Presenting insights from many influential thinkers, and edited by a leading academic in the field, this comprehensive work will prove an invaluable reference tool for economists, researchers and scholars.

Why policies should be based on careful consideration of their costs and benefits rather than on intuition, popular opinion, interest groups, and anecdotes. Opinions on government policies vary widely. Some people feel passionately about the child obesity epidemic and support government regulation of sugary drinks. Others argue that people should be able to eat and drink whatever they like. Some people are alarmed about climate change and favor aggressive government intervention. Others don't feel the need for any sort of climate regulation. In The Cost-Benefit Revolution, Cass Sunstein argues our major disagreements really involve facts, not values. It follows that government policy should not be based on public opinion, intuitions, or pressure from interest groups, but on numbers—meaning careful consideration of costs and benefits. Will a policy save one life, or one thousand lives? Will it impose costs on consumers, and if so, will the costs be high or negligible? Will it hurt workers and small businesses, and, if so, precisely how much? As the Obama administration's “regulatory czar,” Sunstein knows his subject in both theory and practice. Drawing on behavioral economics and his well-known emphasis on “nudging,” he celebrates the cost-benefit revolution in policy making, tracing its defining moments in the Reagan, Clinton, and Obama administrations (and pondering its uncertain future in the Trump administration). He acknowledges that public officials often lack information about costs and benefits, and outlines state-of-the-art techniques for acquiring that information. Policies should make people's lives better. Quantitative cost-benefit analysis, Sunstein argues, is the best available method for making this happen—even if, in the future, new measures of human well-being, also explored in this book, may be better still.

Benefit cost analysis (BCA) is the best technique for analyzing proposed or previously enacted projects to determine whether undertaking them is in the public interest, or for choosing between two or more mutually exclusive projects. An introduction to BCA for students as well as practitioners, this accessible volume describes the underlying economic theory and legal and philosophical foundations of BCA. BCA provides an objective framework around which discussion, correction and amendment can take place. Stated simply, it is the calculation of values for all the inputs and outputs from a project and then the subtraction of the first from the second. The authors goal here is to take the mystery out of the process. They discuss practical issues of market-based valuation and aggregation, non-market valuation, practical applications of general equilibrium models, issues in discounting, and the impacts of risk and uncertainty in BCA. They also provide a list of resources and case studies looking at ethanol and the use of cellular phones by drivers. Straightforward in style and cutting-edge in coverage, this volume will be highly usable both as a text and a reference. Advanced undergraduates and masters students in public policy, public administration, economics and health care administration programs will find this a valuable resource. It will also be of great use to agencies that perform benefit cost analyses.