For over fifty years project analysis techniques have been applied in the assessment of development projects where poorly designed and appraised projects can waste scarce resources. This study examines the continued relevance of this approach, assesses methodological developments over this period and investigates current practical problems in the application of these techniques. This major work brings together authors with experience of both academic and operational project work to focus on issues such as the shadow exchange rate, the shadow wage, the discount rate and assessment of poverty impact and risk, as well as problems relating to specific sectors covering environmental projects, transport, education and health. There are also general chapters on the experience of semi-input–output-based estimation of shadow prices and the relevance of shadow pricing techniques to the context of developed economies in the EU. An overview by the editors sets out the evolution of the literature and highlights current issues. The general conclusion is that project analysis techniques remain relevant, albeit within a very different development context to that in which they were originally envisaged to be applied. With new perspectives on key economic parameters, this book will appeal to academics working on development, officials involved with project aid programmes, postgraduate students of development and professional economists working on development projects.

This updated new edition explores the techniques used to assess the economic impact of projects in developing countries. Blending an academic understanding of economics and development with an accessible style and practical advice, the costs and benefits of investment projects, an important mechanism for economic development, are assessed to ensure that resource allocation is as productive as possible. New material has been added, particularly on the environmental impact of projects, the role of the discount rate in decision-taking, the application of techniques to estimate willingness to pay for benefit estimation and the quantification of health impacts. Although the basic techniques of project analysis were developed many decades ago, they remain highly relevant to address current concerns, such as population growth, urbanisation, pressure on physical infrastructure, inequality, and the climate crisis. This book aims to provide an accessible overview, drawn from extensive practical experience, of project analysis in developing countries. It will be relevant to students, researchers, and practitioners interested in development economics.

A text on project planning and analysis in developing countries, this book focuses on the economic and financial analysis of projects, but also demonstrates the importance of other factors to those who might otherwise give undue weight to economic and financial calculations.

What is the effect of a new infrastructure on the well-being of a local community? Is a tax reform desirable? Does the privatization of a telecommunication provider increase social welfare? To answer these questions governments and their policy advisors should have in mind an operative definition of social welfare, and cannot rely on simple official statistics, such as GDP. The price we observe are often misleading as welfare signals, and costs and benefits for the society should be based on ‘shadow prices’, revealing the social opportunity costs of goods and of changes of the world. This book explains how to apply these welfare economics ideas to the real world. After a theoretical discussion of the concept of social welfare, a critical analysis of the traditional doctrine of welfare economics embodied in the Two Fundamental Theorems, and a presentation of social cost-benefit analysis, the book introduce the readers to an applied framework. This includes the empirical estimation of shadow prices of goods, of the social cost of labour and capital, the assessment of risk. This book also includes the state of the art of international experience with CBA, including ex-post evaluation of major projects, economic rates of return in different sectors, and a case study on privatisation, is presented. This book offers a unique and original blend of theory, empirics and experience. The theoretical discussion clarifies why shadow prices are not virtual market equilibrium prices, as they arise as the solution of a planning problem, often with governments and economic agents constrained in their information and powers. The empirical chapters show how to compute proxies of the shadow prices in simple ways. The experience chapters draw from first hand research, gained by the Author and his collaborators over many years of advisory work for the European Commission and other international and national institutions.

This book fills the gap between social science methodology books and the realities of conducting social research under Third World conditions. It focuses on social impact assessment methods and cost effective social analyses for development projects and programs in US and Third World countries.

Project economic analysis is a tool used by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to ensure that ADB operations comply with its Charter. The guidelines in this publication are a revised version of the 1997 edition. The revision responds to the changing development context and ADB operational priorities, and aims to address the recommendations of the ADB Quality-at-Entry Assessments for more methodological work on project economic analysis. The revised guidelines provide general principles for the conduct of project economic analysis, and should be read together with handbooks, technical reports, and other reference materials published by ADB dealing with sector-specific project economic analysis in detail.

This book provides a unique and timely analysis of the role of structural change in the economic development of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) with a consideration for the role of industry, and in particular manufacturing. The emergence of BRICS reflects an ongoing change in the international economic order. BRICS now account for very substantial part of global GDP, global manufactured value added and global manufactured exports. The book examines their economic experiences and structural change in BRICS over the past three decades, identifying both differences and commonalities, and deriving lessons for other industrializing countries. Section I contains comparative studies focusing on the commonalities and differences of the experiences of BRICS. Section II includes six country studies providing a more detailed analysis of the long-run experiences of each of the countries. Section III consists of a set of seven thematic studies focusing on specific topics such as global value chains, the role of transnational corporations in the food chain, the role of foreign versus domestic investment, the role of domestic versus foreign demand in economic growth the diffusion of environmental energy technology and the similarities, and the differences in industrial policies pursued in the five countries. The book contains a summary chapter that provides an integrated perspective of the various contributions from the point of view of poverty reduction and development. It asks, whether the patterns of structural change and industrial development that BRICS experienced, had an impact on poverty outcomes, and if so, what where the channels and the consequences?