New infrastructure projects may affect CO2 emissions and, thus, cost benefit analyses for these projects require a value to apply for CO2. This may be based on the marginal social cost of emissions or on the carbon price resulting from present and future policies. This paper argues that both...

Despite decades of research on mechanism design and on many practical aspects of cost-benefit analysis, one of the most basic and ubiquitous features of regulation as actually implemented throughout the world has received little theoretical attention: exemptions for small firms. These firms may...

This paper reviews alleged societal benefits and costs of International Investment Agreements (IIAs) as suggested by academia, governments, business and civil society. It sets out the wide range of issues that diverse actors have proposed in the context of assessing the societal benefits and...

Does digital infrastructure increase trade benefits in services, and how large are these trade benefits? This paper uses the prevalence of countries' data centres and secure internet servers to investigate the impact of data-related infrastructures on services trade. Data centres and internet...

Quality of life challenges, presented by the Covid-19 pandemic, emphasized the importance in achieving progress in making access to voice and broadband data services widespread and affordable. The virus forced nearly everyone to shelter in place, and to rely on wired and wireless technologies...

This paper provides a systematic welfare-based approach to analyze the impact of non-tariff measures (NTMs) on trade and welfare in presence of market imperfections. We focus on standard-like measures such as technical barriers and sanitary and phytosanitary regulations. The approach overcomes...

Calls for benefit-cost analysis in rule-making based on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act have revealed a paucity of work on allocative efficiency in financial markets. We propose three principles to help fill this gap. First, we highlight the need to quantify the "statistical cost of a...

Decisions on investing in health as well as other policies require deciding how to best allocate available resources - recognizing that using labor, materials, and other resources for one purpose means that they cannot be used for other purposes. Approaches for economic evaluation, including...

Cost-benefit analysis (“CBA”) has faced significant opposition during most of its tenure as an influential agency decisionmaking tool. As advancements have been made in CBA practice, especially in more complete monetization of relevant effects, CBA has been gaining acceptance as an essential...