The Politics of Cost-Benefit Analysis

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is a widely used economic appraisal method that aims to support politicians in making decisions about projects and policies. Several researchers have tried to uncover the extent to which CBA actually impacts decision-making by investigating the statistical relation between the results of CBA studies and political...

Towards improved handling of uncertainty in cost-benefit analysis: Addressing the ‘price-quality’ and ‘communication’ dilemmas

An important limitation of Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is the inherent uncertainty in estimations of future welfare effects. In this paper, we argue that consideration of the ‘price-quality’ dilemma and the ‘communication’ dilemma is useful to explain and improve the handling of uncertainty in CBA. The ‘price-quality’ dilemma refers to the trade...