A Guide to Cost-Benefit Analysis of Drunk-Driving Policies

1998 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 795-812 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Kenkel
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Safety ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Drunk Driving ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Statistical Life ◽  
Worthy Goal ◽  
Benefits And Costs

Social cost-benefit analysis (CBA) offers a framework for societal decisions about drunk-driving policies. An effective drunk-driving policy reduces the extra fatal risks drunk drivers impose on others. This risk reduction can be valued as the expected number of lives saved multiplied by the dollar value of a statistical life. Drunk-driving policies create social costs because when resources are used to combat drunk-driving, they can not be used in the production of other goods and services. Complications considered include the distinction between private versus external benefits and costs, the roles of poor information and irrationality, constraints on public sector budgets, and what costs should be included. Social CBA can not make difficult policy decisions easy, but does help clarify the tradeoffs involved as policy makers pursue the worthy goal of improving traffic safety by reducing drunk-driving.

Rear Visibility and Some Unresolved Problems for Economic Analysis (With Notes on Experience Goods)

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cass R. Sunstein
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Safety ◽  
Market Failure ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Highway Traffic ◽  
Experience Goods ◽  
National Highway Traffic Safety ◽  
Standard Cost ◽  
Regulatory Law

AbstractIn 2014, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finalized its rear visibility regulation, which requires cameras in all new vehicles, with the goal of allowing drivers to see what is behind them and thus reducing backover accidents. In 2018, the Trump administration embraced the regulation. The rear visibility rule raises numerous puzzles. First, Congress’ grant of authority was essentially standardless – perhaps the most open-ended in all of federal regulatory law. Second, it is not easy to identify a market failure to justify the regulation. Third, the monetized costs of the regulation greatly exceeded the monetized benefits, and yet on welfare grounds, the regulation can plausibly be counted as a significant success. Rearview cameras produce a set of benefits that are hard to quantify, including increased ease of driving, and those benefits might have been made a part of “breakeven analysis,” accompanying standard cost-benefit analysis. In addition, rearview cameras significantly improve the experience of driving, and it is plausible to think that in deciding whether to demand them, many vehicle purchasers did not sufficiently anticipate that improvement. This is a problem of limited foresight; rearview cameras are “experience goods.” A survey conducted in 2019 strongly supports this proposition, finding that about 56 % of consumers would demand at least $300 to buy a car without a rearview camera, and that fewer than 6 % would demand $50 or less. Almost all of that 6 % consists of people who do not own a car with a rearview camera. (The per-person cost is usually under $50.) These conclusions have general implications for other domains in which regulation has the potential to improve social welfare, even if it fails standard cost-benefit analysis; the defining category involves situations in which people lack experience with a good whose provision might have highly beneficial welfare effects.

Evaluating the Economic Viability of Public Investments in Tourism

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-130
Author(s):  
Onil Banerjee ◽  
Martin Cicowiez ◽  
Adela Moreda
Keyword(s):  
Computable General Equilibrium ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Analytical Techniques ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Economic Viability ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Development Bank ◽  
Public Investments ◽  
Benefits And Costs

AbstractVarious methods have been applied to evaluating the economic viability of public investments in tourism. In this article, we capitalize on the strengths of computable general equilibrium and cost-benefit analytical techniques and develop an integrated approach to evaluating public investments in tourism. We apply the approach to the evaluation of a US$6.25 million investment in tourism in Uruguay from the perspective of a multilateral development bank and a beneficiary government. These perspectives differ in a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) due to the timing of the costs incurred. The integrated approach is powerful in that it captures first and subsequent rounds of investment impacts of benefits and costs; resource diversion and constraints are accounted for, and the estimation of benefits is consistent with the welfare economics underpinnings of CBA.

“Expensive” people: Consumer citizenship and the limits of choice in neoliberal publics

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 190-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Whitney Gent
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Choice ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
The United States ◽  
Housing First ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Chronic Homelessness ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Consumer Citizenship ◽  
The Cost

In a context of neoliberalism, decisions made for a “public” good are often articulated as what makes the most financial sense, and citizenship is exercised as a matter of consumer choice. Neoliberal theory positions choice as an unmitigated good, and as universally available when markets are deregulated and goods and services are privatized. Examining rhetorics of choice, however, illuminates the often-invisible power relations that shape choice, and makes visible the ways in which choice is conditioned by inequality. This essay attends to the cost–benefit analysis used to promote the spread of Housing First, an approach to addressing chronic homelessness in the United States. It argues that a neoliberal discourse of choice reconfigures possibilities for rhetorical citizenship by constructing “good” and “bad” consumer citizen subjectivities, constraining agency for “expensive” people while concentrating responsibility for public decision-making among “taxpayers.” These discourses thus limit membership to neoliberal publics to people with access to private resources.

Environmental sustainability

2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 629-651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Ekins
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Ecosystem Goods And Services ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Sustainability Standards ◽  
The Cost

This paper reflects on the extensive literature on environmental sustainability that has been produced over the last two decades, and proposes a new approach for environmental policy that goes beyond the cost-benefit analysis that has proved so difficult to implement for non-marginal environmental issues. This approach combines the Safe Minimum Standard approach, which was proposed many years ago, with the concepts of environmental functions and ecosystem goods and services, which have been developed much more recently. It is shown that this approach provides the basis for a robust calculation of sustainability across different environmental themes, following which a ‘sustainability gap’, showing the extent to which this standard is not being met, may be computed. This gap may be expressed in both physical and monetary terms, which permits the formulation of sustainability performance in a scientifically robust, easily communicable indicator that may be compared with GDP. While there appear to be no insurmountable scientific or practical obstacles to the full operationalization of this approach, it remains to be seen whether human societies are sufficiently concerned about the implications of continuing environmental unsustainability to make the resources available for such operationalization, and to enact the policies to allow the sustainability standards to be met.

Serious and Violent Young Offenders’ Decisions to Recidivate: An Assessment of Five Sentencing Models

2003 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond R. Corrado ◽  
Irwin M. Cohen ◽  
William Glackman ◽  
Candice Odgers
Keyword(s):  
Metropolitan Area ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Young Offenders ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Single Model ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Composite Models ◽  
Explained Variance ◽  
Procedural Rights

Five models of sentencing were assessed with respect to their impact on the decisions of young offenders to recidivate. The five sentencing models tested were fairness, deterrence, chronic offender lifestyle, special needs, and procedural rights. A sample of 400 incarcerated young offenders from the Vancouver, British Columbia, metropolitan area were asked questions regarding their attitudes toward these sentencing models and their intentions to recidivate after serving a period of incarceration. Principal components analyses suggested that although these models do not function independently, two composite models do shed some light on the issues that young offenders consider when contemplating their decisions and intentions to recidivate. Despite the ability of these models to predict half of the explained variance in young offenders’ decisions regarding recidivism, a majority of the sample appeared to not be affected exclusively by cost-benefit analysis, punishment, or reintegrative motivations. The authors conclude that without additional variables and even higher predictive validity, it is premature for policy makers to focus on any single model of sentencing in constructing juvenile justice laws.

An outline of a cost–benefit analysis of increased felling in Sweden

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 637-642
Author(s):  
Per-Olov Johansson
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Excess Demand ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Benefits And Costs

For some years it has been claimed that there is a "shortage" of roundwood in Sweden. The purpose of this paper is to examine what is meant by this shortage and to estimate social benefits and costs of an increased supply of roundwood. The estimates indicate that it is profitable for the society to eliminate the excess demand (shortage) through an increased supply.

scholarly journals Beyond Search Costs: The Linguistic and Trust Functions of Trademarks

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariel Katz
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Search Costs ◽  
The Other ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Quality Of Information ◽  
Trademark Law ◽  
Goods And Services

Modern trademark scholarship and jurisprudence view trademark law as an institution aimed at improving the amount and quality of information available in the marketplace by reducing search costs. By providing a concise and unequivocal identifier of the particular source of particular goods, trademarks facilitate the exchange between buyers and sellers, and provide producers with an incentive to maintain their goods and services at defined and persistent qualities.Working within this paradigm, this Article highlights that reducing search costs and providing incentives to maintain quality are related yet distinct functions and shows that recognizing their distinct nature enriches our understanding of trademark law. The Article first develops a distinction between two functions of trademarks: a linguistic and a trust functions. Then, the Article demonstrates how the distinction provides a matrix for evaluating the normative strength of various trademark rules and doctrines. Under this matrix, rules that promote both functions would be considered normatively strong; rules that promote neither function would be normatively weak; and rules that promote one function but not the other would be normatively ambiguous, their strength depending on the results of a closer cost-benefit analysis.

scholarly journals A COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF DELHI AIRPORT PPP PROJECT

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-30
Author(s):  
Sumana Chaudhuri ◽  
Ranjan Chaudhuri
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Social Goals ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Financial Returns ◽  
Social Evaluation ◽  
International Airport ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Benefits And Costs

One of the central tenets of the cost benefit analysis (CBA) literature is the divergence between a project’s financial returns and social evaluation of what is desirable from the larger economic priorities and social goals of development. This article focuses on building a base of CBA for Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) as a case for Brownfield PPP Airport Project in India. The process of evaluation of the relative merits of the project in terms of the accrued benefits and costs, serves as a template for future frame of reference in similar PPP airport projects.

scholarly journals Unquantified Benefits and the Problem of Regulation under Certainty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan S. Masur ◽  
Eric A. Posner
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Agency Staff ◽  
Prior Probabilities ◽  
New Information ◽  
Benefits And Costs ◽  
Bayesian Prior

102 Cornell Law Review 87 (2016)Regulatory agencies are required to perform cost-benefit analysis of major rules. However, in many cases regulators refuse to report a monetized value for the benefits of a rule that they issue. Sometimes, they report no monetized value; at other times, they report a monetized value but also state that not all benefits have been quantified. On occasion, regulators also refuse to monetize or fully monetize costs. These practices raise a puzzle. If a regulator chooses not to monetize all the benefits or all the costs, it is not doing cost-benefit analysis. If it is not doing cost-benefit analysis, what is it doing? To investigate this question, we compiled a data set consisting of all major regulations issued by agencies from 2010 to 2013. We come to three conclusions. First, there are countless examples where agencies fail to fully monetize the benefits and costs of regulations. Second, in most cases, agencies could easily monetize or partially monetize those benefits and costs. Third, even where monetization would be difficult, the agencies could and should have made explicit the implicit valuations they relied on and supported those valuations as much as possible with empirical evidence. We then proceed to explain how agencies could engage in cost-benefit analysis even when they do not have a reliable basis for estimating valuations. Even where they lack complete data, agency regulators may be able to make reasonable guesses about the harms or benefits from regulations. In many cases, these guesses will be based on the experience and latent knowledge of the agency staff. These preliminary guesses constitute Bayesian prior probabilities. While agencies should be permitted to “guess” — that is, supply a subjective prior probability — they must also be required to update their estimates as they gain new information.

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