scholarly journals DETERMINATION OF THE COST COMPONENT IN THE SOCIAL COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF ROAD PROJECTS IN SOUTH AFRICA

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wessel Pienaar
Author(s):  
Omid M. Rouhani ◽  
Christopher R. Knittel ◽  
Debbie Niemeier

Studies examining the social cost of driving usually ignore the opportunity cost of having roads in place: the associated land rents. Especially for geographic regions where land is valuable, including the rent costs may even lead governments to close some roads. By using the London congestion charging zone case, a more general long-run social cost curve is calculated with the addition of the rents. Based on the optimal road usage concept, this study found that including the rents in the cost/benefit analysis significantly affects the results and can increase the social cost by up to 200% and decrease the optimal road usage by 40%.


1975 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 296-314
Author(s):  
Shahrukh Rafi Khan

Pakistan, like any developing country, must regularly divert some of the scarce agricultural land to an alternative use—to another crop, to a site for a reservoir or a plant for processing agriculture's output, or to industrial, com¬mercial or housing purposes. This paper is an exercise in estimating he social cost of releasing agricultural land in the Punjab for use in another activity. It will, hopefully, serve as a model for planners and policy-makers who are con¬fronted with specific projects requiring cost-benefit analysis. For example, Pakistan's Fifth Five-Year Plan calls for construction of numerous sugar mills, sites for which will require an estimated 100 acres of agricultural land per mill. The-cost of using this land for sugar refining may be expressed in terms of the net value of the agricultural output foregone. Similarly, if cane cultivation > is extended to provide input for the refineries, its cost must be evaluated by the value of the crops which are foregone.


2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Santhakumar ◽  
Achin Chakraborty

This paper presents the operational procedures involved in incorporating the environmental costs in the cost–benefit analysis of a hydro-electric project. The proposed project, if implemented, would result in the loss of 2,800 hectares of tropical forests and dislocation of two settlements of about 200 families who are currently dependent on the forests for their livelihood. The forests are mainly used for extracting reed – a material used both by traditional artisans and the paper-pulp industry. The potential environmental costs and benefits of the project are identified and approximate estimates of some of these costs are made for items such as carbon sequestration, bio-diversity, and so on, based on similar estimates made elsewhere. These estimated environmental costs are incorporated into the analysis, and the hypothetical estimate of the non-use value, which would make the project's net benefit zero, is estimated under different discount rates. The analysis brings into sharp focus some crucial factors that have a direct bearing on the social trade-off involved in the project choice.


New Medit ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-104
Author(s):  
Hamed Daly-Hassen ◽  
Mohamed Annabi ◽  
Caroline King-Okumu

Climate change exacerbates the effects of water scarcity on livelihoods. Governments can intervene by structuring incentives for agricultural adaptations so that farmers can choose the ones that create more benefits for the society as a whole. This requires consideration of a range of different benefits to different groups within the social cost-benefit analysis (CBA). We assess the social and private profitability of two alternative tree-based adaptation techniques that have received state support in the traditional barley cropping/rangeland systems in Central Tunisia: olive tree plantation, and intercropping with cactus. The results showed that society does not benefit from offering incentives for olive production. The production of irrigated olive trees without incentives is profitable for farmers and for society, while rainfed plantation is not profitable at all. However, it is possible for farmers to increase their incomes without increasing agricultural water use if they are encouraged to adopt intercropping with cactus to supplement livestock food and watering. The findings highlight scope for policies to balance between returns both for society, and for farmers, as revealed through the application of quantitative social CBA.


2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-290
Author(s):  
Gheorghe Zecheru ◽  
Ionut Lambrescu

The paper presents the particularities of accomplishing risk analyses with the purpose of establishing the safety distances � SD, between the pipes belonging to the natural gas national transmission system � NTS and facilities (people, animals, buildings, crops, orchards, forests etc.) placed in the their vicinity. In order to check if the distances between the National Gas Transportation Pipeline- NGTP and neighboring facilities are SD, the authors developed a procedure and a software for the risk assessment, which make use of a set of formulas validated by experimental results presented in the paper and information from the data base (built by the authors and presented briefly in our work) regarding the supervision of the technical state and recording of the accidents that took place in the last 19 years on the NGTP from NTS. Also, in the paper, one describes the way the technical solutions verified using the procedure and the software built by the authors can be selected and ranked (in view of implementation) by applying the ALARP principle and the cost � benefit analysis.


2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce D. Spencer ◽  
Julian May ◽  
Steven Kenyon ◽  
Zachary Seeskin

Abstract The question of whether to carry out a quinquennial Census is faced by national statistical offices in increasingly many countries, including Canada, Nigeria, Ireland, Australia, and South Africa. We describe uses and limitations of cost-benefit analysis in this decision problem in the case of the 2016 Census of South Africa. The government of South Africa needed to decide whether to conduct a 2016 Census or to rely on increasingly inaccurate postcensal estimates accounting for births, deaths, and migration since the previous (2011) Census. The cost-benefit analysis compared predicted costs of the 2016 Census to the benefits of improved allocation of intergovernmental revenue, which was considered by the government to be a critical use of the 2016 Census, although not the only important benefit. Without the 2016 Census, allocations would be based on population estimates. Accuracy of the postcensal estimates was estimated from the performance of past estimates, and the hypothetical expected reduction in errors in allocation due to the 2016 Census was estimated. A loss function was introduced to quantify the improvement in allocation. With this evidence, the government was able to decide not to conduct the 2016 Census, but instead to improve data and capacity for producing post-censal estimates.


Resources ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Huppertz ◽  
Bo Weidema ◽  
Simon Standaert ◽  
Bernard De Caevel ◽  
Elisabeth van Overbeke

This paper presents a market-price-based method to value sub-soil resources in environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment. The market price incorporates the privileged information of the market agents, explicitly or implicitly anticipating future applications of the resource, future backstop technologies, recycling potentials, the evolution of reserves and extraction costs. The market price is therefore considered as the best available integrated information reflecting the actual values of these parameters. Our method is based on the Hotelling rule and the fact that private agents discount future costs and benefits at a higher rate than society as a whole. In practice, the price of the last resource unit sold is calculated with the Hotelling rule using a market discount rate. Then, the price at depletion is retropolated with a social discount rate smaller than the market discount rate. The resulting corrected “socially optimal” price is higher than the market price. The method allows to calculate the social cost of resource exhaustion, which is applicable in Cost-Benefit Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment. The method is applied to mineral and fossil resources and the results are compared with other recent methods that seek to place a monetary value on resource depletion.


2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 347-353
Author(s):  
Woo-Jung Jon

This article considers whether it is justifiable to reduce damages where directors are liable for business failure. It argues that holding directors liable for all damage due to business failure prevents individual directors from doing business enterprisingly. According to a cost-benefit analysis, the fear of potential liability results in excessive costs when business decisions are made. The total costs that individual directors expend in making business decisions is smaller than the total costs of the company as the company’s costs includes not only directors’ costs but also other employees’ costs. In comparison, the total amount of loss that individual directors may suffer due to a business failure is far larger than the total loss of the company, where the directors are liable for the total loss of the company jointly and severally. It is because the directors would also suffer salary reduction or discharge. Under these circumstances, the directors should pay close attention in order not to err in their business judgment. Thus, even where risks are minimal, directors may act too cautiously and passively, rather than pursue a more profitable entrepreneurship aggressively. Therefore, the simple compensatory principle may not be adequate where business failure occurs


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