ISSN:
1432-0592
Source:
Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
Topics:
Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying
,
Geography
,
Economics
Notes:
Abstract Benefit-cost analyses have, in the 1980s, become a standard component of impact studies required, usually by legislative directive, in the assessment of major resource development proposals throughout North America. The objective is to provide decision makers with the best possible estimate of net benefits to be realized from the proposed development. The spread of computers during the past decade, coupled with an increased availability of provincial, state or regional input-output tables, has facilitated development of an increasingly comprehensive approach now regularly used in regional benefit-cost assessment studies. Applied analyses, which once focussed almost exclusively on direct benefits and costs, now routinely attempt to measure a variety of “indirect benefits” as well. More complete, and therefore better, assessments should result from the successful extension of applied techniques of analysis. In reality, however, the expanded methodology now commonly used is flawed in two major respects. Further, the erroneous results produced with this methodology have led, in practice, to an upward bias in regional project evaluation. A review of a dozen recently completed Canadian and American benefit-cost assessment studies, or summaries of them, revealed that all contained at least one major methodological error. Most contained several. The first discrepancy concerns the accounting stance adopted for the calculation of regional benefits and costs. In most studies, this was either poorly defined or not defined at all. Since the accounting stance influences both the methodology utilized and the results obtained, confusion on this important matter was a source of error in many studies.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01287320
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