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While cost-benefit analysis is not as prevalent in developing and emerging countries, the use of cost-benefit analysis as an aid to environmental decision-making has expanded in recent years in countries throughout Latin America, Asia, and Africa. In the context of developing and emerging economies, cost-benefit analysis has special potential to add quality, transparency, and efficiency to environmental, public health, and safety regulation. While there are important differences between regulating in a large, advanced economy and a small, rising economy, appropriate use of cost-benefit analysis can help improve government decision-making in a range of different circumstances around the world. Growing environmental and public health threats from industrialization have increased demand for stronger environmental policies around the globe, bringing the need for a systematic tool to compare costs to benefits.

Contingent valuation has been used officially and unofficially by Federal and State agencies in the USA for a number of decades, although its use accelerated in the early 1980s. The results of CV studies have guided resource regulation and environmental protection, and they have been accepted by Courts in legal cases. Contingent valuation is one of the recognized valuation methods employed in assessments under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) (1980).

To accord with the principle of consumer sovereignty, a first requirement is that where government funding is used, the choice of projects must required some method of eliciting individual preferences as reflected in the political decision making process. This entails some way of identifying and measuring costs and benefits of individual projects which takes account of both private and social benefits and costs. Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is commonly used both as a method for identifying which projects are admissible as providing positive net benefits and for choosing between alternative projects. Technical difficulties abound in using CBA, with the most important being how to estimate non-use values which are not priced, and how to compare costs incurred initially with benefits that only accrue over time. A second requirement is that some means must be found to minimize the effects of moral hazard and asymmetric information in chosen projects. Suitable measures not only to obtain cost measures determine how a monitoring system can be developed which should enable the government to identify how output targets are to be met but also whether they are in fact achieved. Again, practical difficulties beset attempts to develop performance budgeting and to command its acceptance by project managers not subjected to the spur of competition. It requires a radical change in the culture of management and control that has been traditionally used.

This chapter considers the application of cost-benefit analysis in the UK transport planning process, asking whether a reliance on narrow economic criteria, and a centralised decision-making process, helps us to progress sufficiently against wide-ranging sustainability goals. A case study of the proposed Merseytram is examined, a project that remains unimplemented from the early 2000s.

This chapter gives practical suggestions for how (and why) governments should undertake cost-benefit analyses in the design of investment incentives. Drawing on relevant case studies and examples from various jurisdictions, This chapter illustrates the risks of failing to do proper cost-benefit analyses, and shows examples of how such analyses are being undertaken.

This chapter analyzes the difficult challenges that arise when considering the environmental justice effects of federal rules and regulations. It complements the discussion in Chapter 4 by examining a different part of the rulemaking process. Specifically, the authors identify five issues as being important in any analysis of distributional implications of a new environmental standard: the geographic scope of the analysis, the identification of potentially affected populations, the selection of a comparison group, how to spatially identify effects on population groups, and how exposure or risk is measured in an analysis. For each issue, the authors consider how it has been addressed in the academic literature, as well as in practice by the EPA as part of five recent proposed or final rulemakings completed under various pollution control statutes. The chapter concludes that, even though there has been a substantial uptick in the number of rules that consider environmental justice issues in their accompanying economic analysis, there remain significant analytical issues to resolve before this becomes a routinized practice.

This chapter argues that reasons are underdetermined and often left out of value-based discussions of nature. The chapter offers a rough sketch of Kantian moral theory – particularly the first two formulations of the Categorical Imperative – to suggest that the primary charge of environmentalism ought to be that of encouraging deeper justification of actions. It utilizes the Endangered Species Act, the argument from ecosystem services, and the case of a stolen kidney to suggest that cost-benefit analysis and related methodologies are insufficient for addressing the broad ethical considerations of environmentalists.

Economic theory seeks to determine the most effective use of scarce resources in achieving a given goal. This chapter discusses evaluation of criminal justice interventions with a view to increasing efficiency of service provision. Such analyses support evidence informed policy by comparing measured costs with benefits of interventions. However, in a political climate that promotes an increasing reliance on the private sector through marketisation, the very choice of intervention studied, and the costs and benefit to be measured, are based on value judgements. This chapter highlights the distinction between the positivist (value-neutral) values of economics and the normative (values-based) choice of the way economics is used.

The introduction sets the scene for the rest of the volume, providing an introduction to the key questions related to investment incentives in the context of broader public policy objectives. The introduction also reviews the key literature and establishes a working definition for incentives.

Brain damage is not just a biochemical effect or physiological change, as the brain is crucial for who we are and what we can achieve. Economists argue that cost estimates are necessary to prioritize allocation of public spending. Thus, intelligence can be expressed in terms of life-time earnings that increase at higher intelligence quotients. Costs in terms of health care, special education, delinquency, and other problems can be expressed in terms of dollars. For the few chemicals with detailed information available, calculations suggest that brain drain costs us billions of dollars per year. These costs do not include the suffering of exposed children and their families.

The chapter synthesizes some of the main conclusions of the book and highlights the need for further research and collaborative dialogue in order to optimize the impact of incentives for sustainable development.

This chapter argues that locations should adopt a holistic approach to the design of their FDI policy (including any incentives), and that their rationale for whether and how to promote FDI should be fully embedded in their broader economic development strategy. Accordingly, this chapter explains the principles that locations should adopt towards incentive design, to ensure that any incentives offered are grounded not only within the FDI policy but, importantly, within an overall development framework.

Mineral nutrition is thought to be the key process leading to the evolution of botanical carnivory. This chapter reviews the current understanding of ecophysiological processes associated with mineral nutrition of terrestrial carnivorous plants, with most attention to papers published since 1990 and to integrative studies of Nepenthes. It compares various characteristics of mineral nutrition of terrestrial carnivorous plants under both field and greenhouse conditions and emphasizes processes of the mineral nutrient economy of carnivorous plants: nutrient uptake efficiency from prey carcasses and reutilization of mineral nutrients from senesced shoots. The primary physiological effect of foliar capture of prey is the stimulation of nutrient uptake by roots. The chapter explains the concept of mineral cost of carnivory and highlights open questions associated with mineral nutrition of terrestrial carnivorous plants.

The introductory chapter presents humanitarian economics as an emerging field of study that offers a largely untapped potential to improve humanitarian policy and practice. The behaviour of combatants and “terrorist” groups is not only influenced by norms and values, but also by cost-benefit calculus. Economic analysis can help to understand critical humanitarian issues such as how prisoners of war have been treated–from medieval times to today. It examines why the kidnap-and-ransom market increasingly affects aid organizations in several parts of the worlds.