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Cost-Benefit Analysis

TL;DR: Costbenefit analysis (CBA) is the systematic and analytical process of comparing benefits and costs in evaluating the desirability of a project or program as mentioned in this paper, often of a social nature, and is fundamental to government decision making and is established as a formal technique for making informed decisions on the use of society's scarce resources.
Abstract: Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is the systematic and analytical process of comparing benefits and costs in evaluating the desirability of a project or programme – often of a social nature. It attempts to answer such questions as whether a proposed project is worthwhile, the optimal scale of a proposed project and the relevant constraints. CBA is fundamental to government decision making and is established as a formal technique for making informed decisions on the use of society’s scarce resources. This timely sixth edition of the classic Cost-Benefit Analysis text continues to build on the successful approach of previous editions, with lucid explanation of key ideas, simple but effective expository short chapters and an appendix on various useful statistical and mathematical concepts and derivatives. The book examines important developments in the discipline, with relevant examples and illustrations as well as new and expanded chapters which build upon standard materials on CBA. Highlights include: updated historical background of CBA extended non-market goods valuation methods the impact of uncertainty evaluation of programmes and services behavioural economics decision rules and heuristics CBA and regulatory reforms CBA in developed and developing countries value of household production other topics frequently encountered in CBA, such as costs of diseases and air pollution, and value of statistical life. This book is a valuable source and guide to international funding agencies, governments, interested professional economists and senior undergraduate and graduate students. The text is fully supported by a companion website, which includes discussion questions and PowerPoint slides for each chapter.
Citations
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Proceedings ArticleDOI
26 Apr 2010
TL;DR: This work model personalized recommendation of news articles as a contextual bandit problem, a principled approach in which a learning algorithm sequentially selects articles to serve users based on contextual information about the users and articles, while simultaneously adapting its article-selection strategy based on user-click feedback to maximize total user clicks.
Abstract: Personalized web services strive to adapt their services (advertisements, news articles, etc.) to individual users by making use of both content and user information. Despite a few recent advances, this problem remains challenging for at least two reasons. First, web service is featured with dynamically changing pools of content, rendering traditional collaborative filtering methods inapplicable. Second, the scale of most web services of practical interest calls for solutions that are both fast in learning and computation.In this work, we model personalized recommendation of news articles as a contextual bandit problem, a principled approach in which a learning algorithm sequentially selects articles to serve users based on contextual information about the users and articles, while simultaneously adapting its article-selection strategy based on user-click feedback to maximize total user clicks.The contributions of this work are three-fold. First, we propose a new, general contextual bandit algorithm that is computationally efficient and well motivated from learning theory. Second, we argue that any bandit algorithm can be reliably evaluated offline using previously recorded random traffic. Finally, using this offline evaluation method, we successfully applied our new algorithm to a Yahoo! Front Page Today Module dataset containing over 33 million events. Results showed a 12.5% click lift compared to a standard context-free bandit algorithm, and the advantage becomes even greater when data gets more scarce.

2,467 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Contingent valuation (CV) has become one of the most widely used non-market valuation techniques and the validity of passive use value has been discussed in this article, which can provide useful guidance both to CV practitioners and the users of CV results.
Abstract: Contingent valuation (CV) has become one of the most widely used non-market valuation techniques. CV's prominence is due to its flexibility and ability to estimate total value, including passive use value. Its use and the inclusion of passive use value in benefit-cost analyses and environ- mental litigation are the subject of a contentious debate. This paper discusses key areas of the debate over CV and the validity of passive use value. We conclude that many of the alleged problems with CV can be resolved by careful study design and implementation. We further conclude that claims that empirical CV findings are theoretically inconsistent are not generally supported by the literature. The debate over CV, however, has clarified several key issues related to nonmarket valuation and can provide useful guidance both to CV practitioners and the users of CV results.

1,081 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Mental contamination is defined as the process whereby a person has an unwanted response because of mental processing that is unconscious or uncontrollable and lay beliefs determine the steps they take (or fail to take) to correct their judgments.
Abstract: We define mental contamination as the process whereby a person has an unwanted response because of mental processing that is unconscious or uncontrollable This type of bias is distinguishable from the failure to know or apply normative rules of inference and can be further divided into the unwanted consequences of automatic processing and source confusion, which is the confusion of 2 or more causes of a response Mental contamination is difficult to avoid because it results from both fundamental properties of human cognition (eg, a lack of awareness of mental processes) and faulty lay beliefs about the mind (eg, incorrect theories about mental biases) People's lay beliefs determine the steps they take (or fail to take) to correct their judgments and thus are an important but neglected source of biased responses Strategies for avoiding contamination, such as controlling one's exposure to biasing information, are discussed

1,069 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper notes the importance of usable systems and promotes the process of human-centred design as a way to achieve them by adopting the framework of ISO 13407 along with a set of usability methods to support it.
Abstract: This paper notes the importance of usable systems and promotes the process of human-centred design as a way to achieve them. Adopting the framework of ISO 13407, each of the main processes in the human-centred design cycle is considered in turn along with a set of usability methods to support it. These methods are briefly described with references to further information. Each set of methods is also presented in a table format to enable the reader to compare and select them for different design situations.

1,004 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The question of whether an auditor should also provide management advisory services (MAS) to an audit client has been extensively debated as discussed by the authors, and the Metcalf Committee Staff Study [1976, pp. 50-52] suggested that supplying both services can create a conflict of interests, particularly when a CPA firm recruits a client's executives and is interested in assuring their success.
Abstract: The question of whether an auditor should also provide management advisory services (MAS) to an audit client has been extensively debated. On the one hand, the Metcalf Committee Staff Study [1976, pp. 50-52] suggested that supplying both services can create a conflict of interests, particularly when a CPA firm recruits a client's executives and is interested in assuring their success, or when it installs a management information system and subsequently audits the reliability and accuracy of its own work. In these situations, a CPA firm acting as both auditor and consultant may be motivated not to report consulting deficiencies observed during the audit, thereby avoiding erosion of its consulting "brand name." In general, any situation which increases the probability that an auditor will not truthfully report the results of his audit investigation can be viewed as a threat to independence.1 An opposing view of potential threats to truthful reporting by auditors engaged in MAS was taken by the Cohen Commission [1978, p. 97],

955 citations