CHAPTER 2

Cost Benefit Analysis and Individual Preferences

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

Sir Winston Churchill

Chapter 2 Preview

When you have completed reading this chapter you will:

•   realize that market prices and surveys contain valuable information about what individuals’ need and want;

•   note that CBA templates list costs and benefits separately;

•   understand the importance of willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA) as measures of a community’s values;

•   differentiate between cost effectiveness analyses (CEA) and (CBA);

•   have an intuitive understanding of conflicts and contradictions associated with what economists label “social welfare ...

Get Basic Cost Benefit Analysis for Assessing Local Public Projects now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.