A number of highly cited papers by Flyvbjerg and associates have shown that ex ante infrastructure appraisals tend to be overly optimistic. Ex post evaluations indicate a bias where investment costs are higher and benefits lower on average than predicted ex ante. These authors argue that the...

The scarcity of water resources in both arid and temperate countries alike is one of the most pervasive natural resource allocation problems facing water users and policy-makers. In arid countries this problem is faced each day in the myriad of conflicts that surround its use.Water scarcity is a...

Appropriate choice of cropping systems to local agro-ecology increases profitability and employment. The increased labour shortage and reduced profitability are growing concerns to the farmers. Keeping this, the paper written with the following objectives: i) To assess the profitability among...

Shift to the program planning and budgeting is a budget policy priority in Russia. However, the current system of public programs development and implementation needs to be improved. The research aims at development of methodological approaches for a priori financial control of public programs...

The public authorities are facing real challenges due to the complexity and dynamics of economic and social issues. They must daily assess the available resources and answer to questions such as „is the citizens’ welfare good enough, can it be improved?” „there are the initiatives for...

This paper addresses the question of whether the findings of behavioral economics imply that techniques used in cost-benefit analysis should be modified. The findings of behavioral economics considered include the status-quo effect, loss-aversion, overconfidence and hyperbolic discounting. These...

The possibilities of cost-benefit analysis are demonstrated when estimating en efficiency of investments in development of children in disadvantageous gamilies in Russia. In Russia, There are no programs similar to the High/Scope Perry Preschool in the U.S.A., and in this preliminary analysis we...

We estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) of individuals to have increased spatial access to hospitals using a spatial hedonic price model. Employing a dataset of over 90,000 detailed housing observations, we find that WTP of individuals to live one mile closer to a hospital is positive if the...

This paper considers the nature of preferences for the preservation of biodiversity, and the extent to which individuals are well-informed about biodiversity. We present evidence that the elicitation of monetary bids to pay for biodiversity preservation, as required for cost-benefit analysis,...

Agricultural crop production is highly dependent upon environmental conditions among which air quality plays a central role. Various air pollutants have been identified as a potential influence on commercial crops including SO2, NOx, O3 and CO2. In particular, ozone in the lower atmosphere has...