Quaranta anni di valutazione delle politiche e degli investimenti pubblici: lezioni dall'esperienza

2009 ◽  
pp. 57-75
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Pennisi
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Critical Issue ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Project Appraisal ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Italian Government ◽  
Evaluation Techniques

- This is a review article based on 40 years of experience in the field of policy and project appraisal and evaluation. The author has had an extensive career in this area in the World Bank, the European Commission, Italian Government Ministries and in academia. The review concludes that cost benefit analysis extended to "real options" and applied jointly with the "effects method" helps solve certain critical issue of traditional financial and economic appraisal and evaluation techniques. More significantly, it contributes to better integrate financial and economic evaluation and appraisal techniques with organizational and sociological evaluation techniques. Key words: appraisal, evaluation, World Bank, distribution weights.

Cost-Benefit Analysis Theory versus Practice at the World Bank 1960 to 2015

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Ward
Keyword(s):  
Public Finance ◽  
Trade Policy ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Private Investment ◽  
Comparative Statics ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World

Two cost-benefit analysis methods developed from differing economic situations and analytical objectives in the 1960s and 1970s. The Trade Policy Approach of Ian Little and James Mirrlees analyzed international competitiveness of projects producing private goods and physical infrastructure in markets severely distorted by trade protectionism; it was adopted in 1975 by the World Bank; the multilateral regional development banks followed suit. The Public Finance Approach of Arnold Harberger developed from comparative statics analyses of public projects and policies in the United States and was adopted at the US Agency for International Development and in several Latin American countries. The original Trade Policy Approach included social analysis too tedious for everyday application, leading an efficiency-only version to emerge and be popularized by teaching materials from Price Gittinger and colleagues in the World Bank’s Economic Development Institute. It proved the right method for World Bank use until Washington Consensus reforms, the GATT and WTO reduced price distortions, and slowly restored private international financial flows gave private industry access to international private investment capital. Official Development Assistance (ODA) portfolios responded by refocusing on public goods and market failures, leading to decreased utility of the Trade Policy Approach and decreased use of cost-benefit analysis at the World Bank. A 1990s drive in the World Bank to switch from the Trade Policy Approach to the increasingly relevant Public Finance Approach resulted in an internal manual and operational guidelines, but not a book from a distinguished university press, commonly presumed to signal official Bank policy. It is time for that long-overdue book to be published.

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Wetland Drainage

1983 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
J K Bowers
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Agricultural Improvement ◽  
Wetland Drainage ◽  
Project Appraisal ◽  
Land Drainage ◽  
Imminent Threat ◽  
Agricultural Yields ◽  
Second Use

The wetland areas of England are under imminent threat of drainage for agricultural improvement. The immediate cause is the local drainage surveys produced under the Water Act 1973. Problems identified in these surveys are subjected to cost-benefit appraisal. Examination of a selection shows that these appraisals are technically defective and result in an overstatement of the benefits and in an overinvestment in land drainage. The main defects are: first, a failure to assess amenity and conservation losses; second, use of prices that contain a substantial element of income transfer which is not netted out; third, a failure to properly calculate the rate of land conversion—a crucial variable; fourth, the project appraisal period is arbitrarily chosen or treated as a variable; fifth, the use of theoretical rather than expected agricultural yields; sixth, the level of flood protection aimed at is too high for the stated objective; and, last, anticipated flood losses are not deducted.

Risk in Public Sector Project Appraisal: It Mostly Does Not Matter!

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 301-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Moore ◽  
Anthony E. Boardman ◽  
Aidan R. Vining
Keyword(s):  
Risk Premium ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Public Project ◽  
Aggregate Consumption ◽  
Project Appraisal ◽  
Expected Values ◽  
Net Benefits ◽  
Special Circumstances

Public project appraisal using cost-benefit analysis (CBA) requires analysts to project risky net benefits and to convert these into present values using a social discount rate (SDR). We consider which types of risk matter for CBA. For small projects with only idiosyncratic risks, expected net benefits should be discounted at a risk-free SDR. If projects are large or expected net benefits are correlated with aggregate consumption, the alternatives are to replace expected net benefits with their certainty equivalents (CEs) and to discount these at a risk-free SDR, or to discount expected net benefits using a higher SDR that includes a risk premium. These methods are equivalent under special circumstances that are unlikely; the first approach is the correct one. We examine when replacing expected values with CEs will matter, and how this might be done. For most projects, analysts should discount expected values of net benefits at a risk-free SDR.

scholarly journals "Shadow Prices for Pakistan: An Assessment of Alternative Estimates" - A Reply

1980 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-77
Author(s):  
John Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Shadow Prices ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Weighting System ◽  
Project Appraisal ◽  
Shadow Pricing ◽  
General Thrust

Ms. Tsakok (I) has done a useful job in summarising and commenting on the various estimates of shadow prices which appeared in the symposium on shadow pricing in Pakistan, published in the Summer 1979 issue of this Review. However, her discussion of my paper in the symposium (3) 1 is misleading regarding a number of points of detail, and, more seriously, obscures the general thrust of the argument. Considering the detailed points first, Ms. Tsakok is concerned with a comparison of the values of the key shadow prices given in the different studies as well as with the explanations for the variations between the different estimates. However, JW discusses not the estimation of a set of shadow prices for Pakistan, but the broader question of the implications of the use of an income-weighting system, described conventionally as 'social' analysis, in project appraisal. The shadow prices attributed to my work in Table I of Ms. Tsakok's paper (II are not in fact contained in JW. but are taken from an earlier mimeographed paper written in 1977. These shadow prices are preliminary estimates, which are not used in my more detailed study on cost benefit analysis in Pakistan [2]. Furthermore, It is strange to find these estimates cited, since they conflict with the analysis of JW, which is the paper under review.

scholarly journals A Non-Market Valuation Approach to Environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis for Sanitary Landfill Project Appraisal

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7718
Author(s):  
Nik Nor Rahimah Nik Ab Rahim ◽  
Jamal Othman ◽  
Norlida Hanim Mohd Salleh ◽  
Norshamliza Chamhuri
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Environmental Values ◽  
Market Valuation ◽  
Environmental Cost ◽  
Sanitary Landfill ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Project Appraisal ◽  
Implicit Prices ◽  
Non Market Valuation

Extensive non-engineered landfilling practice in developing countries has raised environmental concerns, but operating a sanitary landfill appears infeasible due to financial incapability. This study aims to determine the feasibility of a sanitary landfill project by including its environmental values into the project appraisal while simultaneously applying three policy-relevant methods—non-market valuation, benefits transfer, and cost-benefit analysis—in two study areas in Peninsular Malaysia. The non-market valuation study used choice modeling, a questionnaire-based technique, to elicit willingness to pay among 624 households toward the environmental attributes of the sanitary landfill. Their responses resulted in the monetary values of the environmental attributes by referring to implicit prices of leachate discharge, bad odor, disease vector and view. The implicit prices of bad odor (RM2.29 per month) and view (RM3.59 per month) in the two study areas were transferable and used as a proxy of additional solid waste disposal payment in environmental cost-benefit analysis. Positive net present value offers empirical evidence of the feasibility of the sanitary landfill project. The findings show that the inclusion of environmental values in project appraisals increases the chances of implementing sanitary landfills, providing a new approach to address the environmental concerns in developing countries. Future research should consider the external costs along with the external benefits to allow for a comprehensive comparison between environmental values in environmental cost-benefit analysis.

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