Applied Cost Benefit Analysis

This edition will cement the book’s place as a major and accessible text in the field and will be of great interest to graduate and undergraduate students of welfare economics and microeconomic theory, as well as government economists involved with any area of public policy. This fully updated new edition continues in the vein of its predecessor by viewing cost-benefit analysis as applied welfare economics, while at the same time building on the earlier framework by extending the theory and providing further applications in each chapter. New for this edition are analyses of theory related applications in mental health, condom social marketing programs, female primary education as a means of preventing HIV/AIDS and the pricing of natural gas. Presented in an integrated manner, the theoretical concepts are constructed around the main building blocks of CBA, such as shadow pricing, distribution weights, the social discount rate and the marginal cost of public funds. This edition will cement the book's place as a major and accessible text in the field and will be of great interest to graduate and undergraduate students of welfare economics and microeconomic theory, as well as government economists involved with any area of public policy.

This major text presents students with a unified statement of the principles of cost-benefit analysis. Applied Cost-Benefit Analysis emphasizes the usefulness of the theory of CBA as a practical guide to social decision-making. Robert J. Brent offers a synthesis and extension of welfare economics before showing how the basic tenets of CBA can be successfully applied in a series of case studies. Each of these studies relates to an important and concrete public policy issue analysed using real data. The discussion of these specific applications shows the relevance of the theory in a wide range of different institutional structures, government expenditure categories in both developed and developing countries. Integrating theory with practice, this text provides a unified statement of the basic principles of CBA viewed as applied welfare economics where each theoretical concept has an application that relates to practical policy problems. Combining a strong theoretical base with real world applications, Applied Cost-Benefit Analysis will be welcomed by upper level undergraduate economists as well as professionals working in transport, the environment and health care.