The issue of assessing priorities is one that has become the subject of much debate in the National Health Service particularly in the wake of various documents on priorities from central Government. It has become even more so with the prospect of real cuts in expenditure. Economists claim that their science, or perhaps more accurately art can assist in determining not only how best to achieve ...

.................................................................................................................................. 3

This review-essay explores the uses and limits of cost-benefit analysis in the context of environmental protection, focusing on three recent books: Priceless, by Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling; Cellular Phones, Public Fears, and A Culture of Precaution, by Adam Burgess; and Catastrophe: Risk and Response, by Richard A. Posner. The review-essay emphasizes three principal limitations on the ...

We present a cost-benefit framework to analyze the interaction between hydropower and salmon in a dynamic context. The framework is used to derive cost-benefit rules for projects that affect wild salmon survival. Our approach is illustrated with data from an ongoing project regarding a potential salmon passage-hydropower conflict in the northern Swedish river Umeälven and its largest salmon pro...

This paper generalizes the Myers and Majluf (1984) model by introducing an agency cost structure based on private benefits of control. This new model predicts that many corporate finance variables each have opposing effects on underand overinvestment. Private benefits exacerbate overinvestment but, interestingly, a small amount of private benefits can enhance firm value by alleviating underinve...