Cost-benefit analysis have been attacked by many critics because of its implicit ethical assumptions. The normative content of the method is at odds with the common attitude that economists should analyze how to reach given goals, while determination of the goals should be left to the...

In traditional cost-benefit analyses of public projects, every citizen's willingness to pay for a project is given an equal weight. This is sometimes taken to imply that cost-benefit analysis is a democratic method for making public decisions, as opposed to, for example, political processes...

Nearly all discussions about the appropriate consumption discount rate for climate change policy evaluation assume that a single discount rate concept applies. We argue that two distinct concepts and associated rates apply. We distinguish between a social-welfare-equivalent discount rate...

We use a CGE model to estimate the social cost of a marginal increase in public expenditure in Norway. Norway exemplifies an economy with high taxes. Distortionary taxes imply wedges between the market prices and the corresponding shadow prices. The shadow prices are unobservable, which is the...

This paper analyzes optimal social discount rates where people derive utility from relative consumption. We identify and compare three separate discount rates -- the social rate (taking positional externalities into account), the private rate, and the conventional Ramsey rate. Two main findings...

Using individual travel diary data collected before and after the rail transit coverage expansion in urban Beijing, this paper estimates the impact of rail accessibility improvement on the usage of rail transit, automobiles, buses, walking, and bicycling, measured as percent distance traveled by...

The Stern Review has had a major influence on the policy discussion on climate change. One reason is that the report has raised the estimated cost of unmitigated climate damages by an order of magnitude compared to most earlier estimates, leading to a call for strong and urgent action on climate...

Federal agencies in the United States are required to prepare regulatory impact analyses (RIAs) for every major regulatory action they undertake. Increasingly, other OECD countries are imposing similar requirements. However, there has been little examination of the quality of these documents or...

We evaluate the effectiveness of energy efficiency labeling in guiding household appliance choice decisions. Using a carefully designed choice experiment with several alternative labeling treatments, we disentangle the relative importance of different types of information and intertemporal...

Micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in developing countries are typically considered to be severely credit constrained. Additionally, high business risks may partly explain why capital stocks of MSEs remain low. This article analyzes the determinants of capital stocks of MSEs in poor economies...