Use Of Cost-benefit Analysis Research Articles

Research on Sensor Network Spectrum Detection Technology based on Cognitive Radio Network

With the bursting development of computer science and the hardware technology, Internet of Things and wireless sensor networks has been popularly studied in the community of engineering. Under the environment of Internet of Things, we carry out theoretical analysis and numerical simulation on the sensor network spectrum detection technology based on cognitive radio network. As a means of information and intelligence, information service system is an important research hotspot in the field of Internet of things. Wireless sensor network is composed of a large number of micro sensor nodes, which have the function of information collection, data processing, and wireless communication, characterized by the integration of wireless self-organization. However, most of the methodologies proposed by the other institutes are suffering form the high complexity while with the high time-consuming when processing information. Therefore, this study is to assess the economic feasibility of using the optimized multipath protocol availability and the increased bandwidth and several mobile operators through the use of cost-benefit analysis, single path selection model is to develop more path agreement to achieve better performance. To test the robustness, we compare our method with the other state-of-the-art approach in the simulation section and proves the effectiveness of our methodology. The experimental result reflected that our approach could achieve higher accuracy with low time-consuming when dealing with complex sources of information.

Risk-Utility Analysis and the Learned Hand Formula: A Hand that Helps or a Hand that Hides?

Judicial inconsistencies in balancing costs against benefits in legal determinations, sometimes referred to as the Learned Hand Formula, indicate that the implications are not fully understood. The incorporation of more formal economic cost-benefit analysis by some courts has only served to increase the confusion and wariness about fostering such guidelines for social behavior.This article's purpose is threefold. One is to demonstrate how the use of cost-benefit analysis necessarily imparts the moral and/or political values of the user into his or her decisions. While the cost-benefit technique is itself value-neutral, its application, as will be shown, requires that some moral choice be made for the cost-benefit implementation. Though the very existence of an underlying value-choice is often obscured by scholars' and judges' presentations of “objective” cost-benefit conclusions (whether deliberately or naively so), the value choices are in fact there and should be elucidated and discussed.The second goal of this article, therefore, is to shed sufficient light on the dimensions of using cost-benefit reasoning so that the reader, whether or not in support of a particular application, can venture knowledgeably into a debate of the value choices attending any cost-benefit argument that might arise.The third purpose of this article is to demonstrate that cost-benefit reasoning as an adjudicatory process is one that grows naturally out of legal jurisprudence and is not merely an intrusion by another social discipline. Because of the furor created by a particular brand of cost-benefit reasoning (primarily by the adherents of the Chicago School), cost-benefit analysis is often viewed as a callous derivative of economic theory insensitive to our notions of fairness and equity, rather than the tool it can be for facilitating existing constitutional values and mores.Parts II and III cover a more detailed history of negligence standards showing the evolution from the avoidable accident approach to one of weighing and balancing, thereby demonstrating that cost-benefit reasoning is, in fact, organic legal doctrine and not the foreign construct of another discipline. However, these sections can easily by skipped without loss of continuity, if the reader should so desire.

Systematic Approach to Identifying Economically Feasible and Environmentally Benign Methods of Recycling Ash on a Regional Scale

This study systematically assessed and compared four ash recycling possibilities, namely forest fertilization, landfill construction, road construction, and road stabilization through the use of cost-benefit analysis and life cycle assessment methods. The results indicated that forest fertilization with ash was the most economically attractive method with a 60% increase in the net present value compared to ash landfilling, while reducing the environmental impact by 0.3%. On the contrary, road construction with ash resulted in a 13% reduction in the environmental impact and an increase in net present value of 25%. Landfill construction with ash was overall the least attractive proposition.

A comparison of cost-benefit analysis of biomass and natural gas CHP projects in Denmark and the Netherlands

We investigate what drives differences in the project appraisal of biomass and natural gas combined heat and power (CHP) projects in two countries with very similar energy profiles. This is of importance as the European Commission is assessing the potential scope of harmonizing renewable electricity support schemes post 2020. Concurrently, it is also promoting the use of cost benefit analysis (CBA) for transnational energy infrastructure projects. We use CBA to assess the same project proposal in Denmark and the Netherlands, following the respective country's guidelines. We find that especially the fuel costs and the valuation of emissions drive the differences. Furthermore, we establish that the sensitivity of the CBA results not only from policy differences in the countries, but also from differences in the methodology used.

Cost-benefit analysis as a part of sustainability assessment of remediation alternatives for contaminated land

There is an increasing demand amongst decision-makers and stakeholders for identifying sustainable remediation alternatives at contaminated sites, taking into account that remediation typically results in both positive and negative consequences. Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) is increasingly used for sustainability appraisal, and the Excel-based MCA tool Sustainable Choice Of REmediation (SCORE) has been developed to provide a relevant and transparent assessment of the sustainability of remediation alternatives relative to a reference alternative, considering key criteria in the economic, environmental and social sustainability domains, and taking uncertainty into explicit account through simulation. The focus of this paper is the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) as a part of SCORE for assessing the economic sustainability of remediation alternatives. An economic model is used for deriving a cost-benefit rule, which in turn motivates cost and benefit items in a CBA of remediation alternatives. The empirical part of the paper is a CBA application on remediation alternatives for the Hexion site, a former chemical industry area close to the city of Göteborg in SW Sweden. The impact of uncertainties in and correlations across benefit and cost items on CBA results is illustrated. For the Hexion site, the traditional excavation-and-disposal remediation alternative had the lowest expected net present value, which illustrates the importance of also considering other alternatives before deciding upon how a remediation should be carried out.

A new composite decision support framework for strategic and sustainable transport appraisals

This paper concerns the development of a new decision support framework for the appraisal of transport infrastructure projects. In such appraisals there will often be a need for including both conventional transport impacts as well as criteria of a more strategic and/or sustainable character. The proposed framework is based on the use of cost-benefit analysis featuring feasibility risk assessment in combination with multi-criteria decision analysis and is supported by the concept of decision conferencing. The framework is applied for a transport related case study dealing with the complex decision problem of determining the most attractive alternative for a new fixed link between Denmark and Sweden – the so-called HH-connection. Applying the framework to the case study made it possible to address the decision problem from an economic, a strategic, and a sustainable point of view simultaneously. The outcome of the case study demonstrates the decision making framework as a valuable decision support system (DSS), and it is concluded that appraisals of transport projects can be effectively supported by the use of the DSS. Finally, perspectives of the future modelling work are given.

Special issue on forest investments profitability

In this special issue, a sample of the papers presented and discussions held are provided. The selected articles are partly presented in the context of the cost–benefit analysis of forests investments. Public budgeting process nowadays requires in most countries a thorough economic analysis of the annual projects and programmes. Forestry institutions are no exception. However, in the public arena and international organisations, the records of appropriate cost–benefit of forestry projects are scant. A recent review of the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) by the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank which spread the use of CBA to justify development projects, shows that the economic analysis of projects has been diminishing compared to their uses in the 70s. For natural resources, and forestry in particular, the presence of recognised positive externalities seems to have diminished the reason to undertake this analysis. In the context of budgeting constraints encountered by many countries following the 2008 financial crisis, the need for a proper analysis of natural resources investments has been made more acute.

Introduction to a special issue entitled Perspectives on Implementing Benefit-Cost Analysis in Climate Assessment

Abstract:Over the past half-century or more, economists have developed a robust literature on the theory and practice of benefit-cost analysis (BCA) as applied to diverse projects and policies. Recent years have seen a growing demand for practical applications of BCA to climate change policy questions. As economists seek to meet this demand, they face challenges that arise from the nature of climate change impacts, such as the long time frame and the potential for non-marginal changes, the importance of intangible effects, and the need to grapple with Knightian uncertainty. As a result of these and other characteristics of climate change, many of the fundamental tenets of BCA are coming under scrutiny and the limits of BCA’s methodological and practical boundaries are being tested. This special issue assembles a set of papers that review the growing body of literature on the economics of climate change. The papers describe the state of the literature valuing climate change impacts, both globally and at more disaggregated levels. The papers also discuss the challenges economists face in applying BCA to support climate change decision making and adaptation planning. This introduction provides background and context on the current use of BCA in climate change analysis, and sets each paper firmly in that context, identifying also areas for future research. While the challenges in conducting BCA and interpreting its results are significant, across the papers it becomes clear that economic analysis in general, and the tools and methods of BCA in particular, have a central role to play in supporting decision-making about how to respond to climate change.

New values of time and reliability in passenger transport in The Netherlands

We have established new values of time (VOTs) and values of travel time reliability (VORs) for use in cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of transport projects in The Netherlands. This was the first national study in The Netherlands (and one of the first world-wide) to investigate these topics empirically in a joint framework.Stated preference (SP) questionnaires were designed for interviewing travellers, where the hypothetical alternatives were described in terms of travel time, travel costs and travel time reliability, the latter being presented to the respondents in the form of five possible travel times having equal probability.For passenger transport, we first collected interviews using an existing internet panel. Additional data collection recruitment was done by asking travellers at petrol stations/service areas, parking garages, stations, bus stops, airports and ports to participate in the survey. One important conclusion is that the SP survey using members of this internet panel leads to substantially lower VOTs than the SP survey with en-route recruitment, probably because of self-selection bias in the internet panel.We estimated discrete choice models in which the values of time differ between trips with different time and costs levels, different time and costs changes offered in the SP, and different observed characteristics of the respondents (e.g. education, income, age, household composition). By using a panel latent class model, we also account for unobserved differences between respondents in the value of time and for repeated measurements/panel effects. The reference values of time and the reference reliability ratios were estimated on the 2011 sample only, but the effect of time and cost level, time and cost changes offered and socio-economic attributes was estimated on both the 2009 and 2011 samples.

The Accidental Postmodernists: A New Era of Skepticism in Environmental Policy

Environmental law and policy conflicts seem to have entered a new phase. The emergence of complex problems such as climate change and of complex technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and genetic modification have created new political and legal schisms that no longer break down predictably along "pro-environment" versus "pro-business" lines. Rather, a new era of skepticism seems to be taking hold in which antagonists spar over the epistemic legitimacy of certain claims made in support of a policy position. Environmental law and policy conflicts thus divide antagonists into two camps: self-styled positivists – scientists (physical, chemical, biological, and social) and environmental postmodernists, who seek to undermine the legitimacy of the positivists.Environmental postmodernists urge us to take a skeptical look at the claims of self-styled positivists, because they suspect their epistemic claims are part of an attempt to gerrymander environmental law. Some environmental postmodernists challenge the use of cost-benefit analysis, and others are climate skeptics, who contest the prevailing concern over global climate change. These new schisms produce strange bedfellows, but environmental postmodernists share a common objective of creating doubt and skepticism.I argue that environmental postmodernism can make a contribution: it can highlight dangerous policy situations in which a concentration of esoteric information can generate a power imbalance, and it can highlight the usefulness of transparency measures aimed only making information more publicly accessible and otherwise broadening process inputs. If this is the upshot of environmental postmodernism, it will have articulated a policy means of power diffusion, and therefore gone beyond the failures of Twentieth-century, post-structuralist postmodernism.

Defining Groundwater Remediation Objectives with Cost-benefit Analysis: Does It Work?

The use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is increasingly advocated as a tool for supporting water planning decisions, in particular at the local (site) level. This paper questions whether CBA is relevant for evaluating groundwater management options at the scale of large regional aquifers. It highlights the difficulties related to estimating the cost of groundwater protection and remediation measures at the regional (water body) level. It also identifies methodological challenges in estimating the economic value of the benefits of groundwater protection. The paper is based on an original case study carried out on the upper Rhine valley aquifer in eastern France. The methodology deployed combines engineering approaches to assess the cost of remediation and economic methods (contingent valuation) to estimate the benefits associated with groundwater improvement.

The Use of Cost-Benefit Analysis in Environmental Policy

When analyzing environmental problems, economists consider both the benefits and costs of actions. If benefits exceed costs then economic theory supports that action. For example, if the total benefits of conserving land exceed the costs then cost-benefit analysis would support conservation of the land. However, great care must be taken to accurately identify and quantify benefits and costs to determine whether an action is cost-benefit justified. Stakeholders may have an incentive to overstate costs or benefits, in order to influence decision-making. This 5-page fact sheet was written by Elizabeth F. Pienaar, and published by the UF Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, September 2013. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/uw383

The Use of a Social Cost of Carbon in Canadian Cost-Benefit Analysis

The Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) is being adopted for systematic use in cost-benefit analysis (CBA) conducted by the Government of Canada. Although there are potential efficiency gains from its application, we argue that the SCC may be inappropriate for use in CBA for three reasons. First, as currently calculated, the SCC typically excludes the potential for catastrophes and certain types of climate damages, and assumes perfect substitutability between natural and human capital. For these reasons, it is likely to be biased downwards, and as such would provide misleading advice to policy-makers. Second, the SCC is a global measure of benefits, whereas standard practice in CBA is to include only domestic costs and benefits. Accounting for costs borne outside of Canada and along only one dimension (carbon damage) risks reducing economic efficiency and confusing the users of CBA studies. Third, SCC-based decision-making is unlikely to be consistent with Canadian commitments to international partners on emissions reductions; so its adoption risks institutionalizing non-delivery of those commitments.

The value of a statistical life: some clarifications and puzzles

Many people have wondered why the US government conducts cost-benefit analysis with close reference to the value of a statistical life (VSL). It is helpful to answer that question by reference to the “Easy Cases,” in which those who benefit from regulatory protection must pay for it. In such cases, WTP is usually the right foundation for VSL, because beneficiaries are hardly helped by being forced to pay for regulatory protection that they believe not to be in their interests. In the Easy Cases, arguments from both welfare and autonomy support the use of WTP and VSL (with potentially important qualifications involving imperfect information and behavioral market failures). The analysis is less straightforward in harder cases, in which beneficiaries do not pay for all of the cost of what they receive (and may pay little of that cost). In such cases, arguments from welfare and autonomy might not lead in any clear direction. In the harder cases, regulation might be justified on welfare grounds even if the cost-benefit analysis (based on VSL) suggests that it is not. In principle, a direct inquiry into welfare (the master concept) would be preferable to use of cost-benefit analysis. In the harder cases, distributional considerations might also count in favor of proceeding (as prioritarianism suggests). But at the current time, direct inquiries into welfare consequences and into distributional effects are challenging in practice, and hence regulators should generally rely on cost-benefit analysis, making welfarist adjustments, or adjustments based on distributional considerations, only in compelling cases.

The use of ex post cost-benefit analysis to assess the long-term effects of major infrastructure projects

This paper draws from a recent ex-post evaluation carried out for the European Commission aimed at assessing the long term effects produced by a sample of ten major infrastructures in the Transport and Environment sectors and interpreting the key determinants of the observed performance. It discusses some methodological and institutional implications related to the use of cost-benefit analysis with an ex-post perspective.

Rationalizing Risks to Cultural Loss in Resource Development

I argue in this article for the use of a dialogical approach to cost-benefit analysis, which is identified here as a process that rationalizes cross-cultural judging. Weighing in on the Kahan-Sunstein debate about the effect of culture on risk perception, I use economic valuations of Indigenous sacred sites to demonstrate how cost-benefit analysis can misrepresent loss. I identify the way cost-benefit analysis operationalizes preferences that have little relevance for perceptions of substitutability, property, or harm related to sacred sites held by some Indigenous peoples. In doing so, I problematize the use of cost-benefit analysis as a method for ascertaining loss and contextualize risk in the social context in which it is perceived. In order to further procedural justice, I recommend valuation of loss that allows for epistemological disparities in determining rationality. This dialogical approach expects to maximize the accuracy of cost benefit analysis so as to create greater accountability for loss valuation and destabilize formulations of culturally determined preferences as bounded but corrected by expert knowledge.

The Value of a Statistical Life: Some Clarifications and Puzzles

Many people have wondered why the US government conducts cost-benefit analysis with close reference to the value of a statistical life (VSL). It is helpful to answer that question by reference to the “Easy Cases,” in which those who benefit from regulatory protection must pay for it. In such cases, WTP is usually the right foundation for VSL, because beneficiaries are hardly helped by being forced to pay for regulatory protection that they believe not to be in their interests. In the Easy Cases, arguments from both welfare and autonomy support the use of WTP and VSL (with potentially important qualifications involving imperfect information and behavioral market failures). The analysis is less straightforward in harder cases, in which beneficiaries do not pay for all of the cost of what they receive (and may pay little of that cost). In such cases, arguments from welfare and autonomy might not lead in any clear direction. In the harder cases, regulation might be justified on welfare grounds even if the cost-benefit analysis (based on VSL) suggests that it is not. In principle, a direct inquiry into welfare (the master concept) would be preferable to use of cost-benefit analysis. In the harder cases, distributional considerations might also count in favor of proceeding (as prioritarianism suggests). But at the current time, direct inquiries into welfare consequences and into distributional effects are challenging in practice, and hence regulators should generally rely on cost-benefit analysis, making welfarist adjustments, or adjustments based on distributional considerations, only in compelling cases.

VALUING THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

Climate change is already having impacts on terrestrial ecosystem services and such impacts are only expected to broaden and worsen as greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) continue at their historic levels. To set appropriate policies for reducing GHG emissions, economists recommend the use of cost-benefit analysis. To perform such analyses, the predominant approach has been to use integrated assessment models. There is a need for more targeted valuation studies to serve as further evidence about the willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce climate change. The purpose of this brief paper is to sample and classify the literature valuing terrestrial ecosystem services and make some judgments about its usefulness to benefits analysis associated with climate change mitigation. With an emphasis on nonuse values, this paper focuses on stated preference studies. We find that with the pervasiveness of the effects of global warming on all types of natural and human systems, and given the interconnectedness of those systems, it seems too reductionist to focus on valuation of changes to specific resources or systems, in this case terrestrial ecosystems. That is, the value of slowing climate change needs to be estimated from a holistic perspective. To do so, the only possible way to go is with the top-down studies, recognizing that these studies can never provide the detail and the preciseness of commodity definition that is desirable in, say, natural resource damage assessments. However we must ask ourselves as a society if we are willing to trade off precision for comprehensiveness and breadth. The vast literature simply valuing ecosystem services is not largely motivated or directly applicable to climate change. And use of these studies in benefits transfers therefore involves huge assumptions and, even then, there will be gaps in geographic coverage. There are an increasing number of ecosystem valuation studies motivated by climate change that have the right scale and type of commodities being valued. Yet, such studies are invariably place-based and draw relatively tight, rather than porous boundaries between the ecosystem of interest and its linkages to other systems. Thus, one will not be able to easily aggregate such studies, properly account for overlaps and gaps and eventually come out with a cost of carbon. However, examining such studies one at a time and drawing insights out of them may both inform the design of information treatments for the studies and lead to a more qualitative/judgmental basis for settling on a "cost of carbon" number.

How (and When) to Make Hardware Design Changes in Released Products

Occasionally, perhaps more often than we’d like to admit, less-than-optimal product designs are released to the public and result in usability problems. There are several ways this can happen such as obtaining vendor products, expedited time to market, unforeseeable misuse, etc. The way to address field issues such as these is to develop a solution that solves the problem and is economically feasible to implement. This paper describes the use of cost-benefit analysis and provides guidelines to minimize solution-development costs in order to increase the probability that the solution can be implemented efficiently.

(The Economics of) Discounting: Unbalanced Growth, Uncertainty, and Spatial Considerations

The economics of climate change and the various measures that should be implemented to reduce future damages are highly tied to the use of cost-benefit analysis. Traditional approaches ignore the fact that environmental amenities do not experience the same growth rate as do most of the sectors in the economy, which leads to changing relative prices. Uncertainty should also be considered, especially when one is conducting cost-benefit analysis involving the long-run damages from climate change. This article reviews some theoretical approaches to the economics of discounting and discusses issues associated with unbalanced growth, uncertainty, and spatial discounting.