The Economics of Project Appraisal and the Environment


Book Description

A group of economists have prepared these papers to address issues relating to project appraisal and environment effects in developing countries. Adopting no single approach, the papers in this collection show the advantages of alternative approaches to environmental appraisal. This work illustrates the current state of knowledge on this subject and should be of interest to both academic and professional development economists.




Project Appraisal and Valuation of the Environment


Book Description

'The book is a pioneering attempt to see exactly what difference economic valuation of environmental effects would have made to six actual, on-going, development projects, if it had been done at the time of appraisal. It combines theoretical rigour with applied economic skills, presented with robust common sense.' - James Winpenny, Overseas Development Institute This book is a practical and readable guide to valuing the environment and the implications for public investment and policy, useful for students as well as professional economists, policy-makers, engineers, environmental and social planners. It describes how the environment can be valued and how these valuation concepts can be applied to investment decisions. The book provides first a general introduction to the key issues and concepts, considering the nature and magnitude of environmental problems, the cost-benefit method of evaluation and detailed methods for valuing the environment. It then analyses in detail six case-studies, based on actual or proposed major investment projects by the UK Overseas Development Administration or the World Bank. These include water quality in China, the supply of electricity in Bangladesh, slum improvements in India, mass transit in Nigeria, forest conservation in Kenya and soil quality in Bolivia. Thus the book is expected to be of special interest to professionals and students in developing countries, although much of the material has general application in developed as well as in developing countries.




Cost-Benefit Analysis for Project Appraisal


Book Description

This book uses modern economic tools to obtain general equilibrium cost-benefit rules. It not only presents evaluation rules for small projects but also shows how to evaluate large projects as well as mega projects (such as high speed rails and channel tunnels). This is an excellent toolkit for graduate students and policymakers.




Project Appraisal and Macroeconomic Policy


Book Description

Environmental economics addresses the issues that arise on the boundaries between economic systems and natural systems, such as pollution and natural resource de pletion and degradation. Like any other branch of applied economics, it has drawn its tools and techniques from the wide range already available in economics gener ally, selecting, adapting and extending these to meet its own particular requirements in its own particular context. Here, as elsewhere in economics, public policy analy sis requires quantitative assessments of the economic impact of different policy choices. Perhaps the most distinctive contribution of environmental economics has been the development of techniques for the economic valuation of environmental goods and services in the absence of markets for such goods and services, or in the presence of markets that are at best imperfect or incomplete. Nevertheless policy analysis still relies on one or another of three broad groups of methods used in eco nomics generally. One is project appraisal, which at the micro level provides an evaluation ofthe costs and benefits ofinvestment options to inform the choice among them, while at the macro level policy analysis rests either on computable general equilibrium (CGE) models or on economy-wide macroeconometric models. All models are simplifications, designed to focus attention on the important fea tures ofthe problem at hand, and neglecting other features that might for a different problem assume greater importance.




Engineering Project Appraisal


Book Description

In most cases of civil engineering development, a range of alternative schemes meeting project goals are feasible, so some form of evaluation must be carried out to select the most appropriate to take forward. Evaluation criteria usually include the economic, environmental and social contexts of a project as well as the engineering challenges, so engineers must be familiar with the processes and tools used. The second edition of Engineering Project Appraisal equips students with the understanding and analytical tools to carry out effective appraisals of alternative development schemes, using both economic and non-economic criteria. The building blocks of economic appraisal are covered early, leading to techniques such as net present worth, internal rate of return and annual worth. Cost Benefit Analysis is dealt with in detail, together with related methods such as Cost Effectiveness and the Goal Achievement Matrix. The text also details three multi-criteria models which have proved useful in the evaluation of proposals in the transportation, solid waste, energy and water resources fields: the Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) Model, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique and Concordance Analysis. There is a full discussion dealing with risk and uncertainty in these models. With many worked examples and case studies, Engineering Project Appraisal is an essential text for both undergraduate and postgraduate students on professional civil engineering courses, and it is expected that students on planning and construction management courses will find it a valuable addition to their reading.




Cost-benefit Analysis and Project Appraisal in Developing Countries


Book Description

The techniques and methods of project appraisal in developing countries have been considerably expanded and refined since they were first introduced in the late 1960s. This up-to-date and authoritative survey volume demonstrates the ways in which cost-benefit analysis has developed in response to changes in economic circumstances and conditions over the past three decades. An international group of academic and professional economists covers areas including problems in the practical application of cost-benefit techniques by international agencies, the treatment of income distribution, discounting, the effects method, the logical framework as a complement to project appraisal, aid tying, risk criteria in decision making, benefit valuation in the water sector, the appraisal of technical assistance projects, privatization in transition economies and shadow pricing in transition economies. Professor Kirkpatrick and Professor Weiss have prepared an insightful overview essay introducing the broad selection of work presented in this volume.







Project Appraisal


Book Description







Environmental Valuation as part of Project Appraisal by the World Bank


Book Description

Master's Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Economics - Other, grade: 1,0, University of Manchester (School of Environment and Development), course: International Development, language: English, abstract: In face of scarce resources and growing population, sustainability became the term used to consider the needs of future generations in the decision making process referring projects. The World Bank, as one of the major players in the field of development research and practice, aggregates information from different areas in the project appraisal document (PAD) in order to allow for sustainability. One of the approaches used to measure environmental impacts of a project is economic valuation of environmental goods and services. The results of this approach flow into the cost benefit analysis, which is part of the economic analysis. Although substantial critique has been expressed over the last decades, environmental valuation and costbenefit analysis are considered sensible tools in the context of decision making over project funding. This is especially the case because of tremendous development of these techniques over the last decades. This study shows that the World Bank, as one of the leading institutions in the world, treats this topic from two different perspectives. First, there is the theoretical side. Here the World Bank sets out ideal procedures, under their rules and guidelines, and publishes papers and reports with respect to further development of underlying methods. The aim here is to allow for measurement of total social welfare, or in other words measurement of the complete picture of environmental costs and benefits associated with a project. Second there is the practical side, were the World Bank adjusts environmental valuation techniques in order to understand the most important costs and benefits associated with a project, where measurement of the total social welfare of a project is not the target. In this case the aim is to collect sufficient information to allow making a funding decision, rather than understanding the complete picture. This impression is caused by findings from the case study which showed that during project appraisal obvious environmental benefits have not been measured.