Social Cost-Benefit Analysis
Social cost-benefit analysis (SCBA) appraises public investment projects from the standpoint of society as a whole rather than a private investor. It values inputs and outputs at shadow prices that reflect their true opportunity cost to the economy — correcting market prices for taxes, subsidies, trade distortions, and unemployment — applies distributional weights to gains accruing to different income groups, and discounts the resulting stream of social net benefits at a social discount rate to obtain a net present social value. The modern framework was systematized by Little and Mirrlees and, in parallel, in the UNIDO guidelines of Dasgupta, Sen, and Marglin.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Little, I. M. D., & Mirrlees, J. A. (1974). Project Appraisal and Planning for Developing Countries. Heinemann Educational / Basic Books. · ISBN 9780435845001
- Drèze, J., & Stern, N. (1987). The theory of cost-benefit analysis. In A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (Eds.), Handbook of Public Economics (Vol. 2, pp. 909–989). Elsevier. · DOI 10.1016/S1573-4420(87)80009-5
Curated claims
Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.
This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.
Related methods
Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.