International Transport Forum Discussion Papers

ISSN :
2223-439X (en ligne)
DOI :
10.1787/2223439x
Cacher / Voir l'abstract
The International Transport Forum at the OECD is an intergovernmental organisation with 52 member countries. It acts as a strategic think tank for transport policy and organizes an annual summit of ministers. Our work is underpinned by economic research, statistics collection and policy analysis, often undertaken in collaboration with many of the world's leading research figures in academia, business and government. This series of Discussion Papers is intended to disseminate the ITF’s research findings rapidly among specialists in the field concerned.
Previous papers addressing these policy issues are available via http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/20708270
 

Improving the Practice of Cost Benefit Analysis in Transport You or your institution have access to this content

Auteur(s):
OCDE, Forum International des Transports
Date de publication
01 jan 2011
Bibliographic information
No:
2011/01
Pages
18
DOI
10.1787/5kghzxq2q546-en

Cacher / Voir l'abstract

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is widely recognized to be helpful, even indispensible, for making good decisions on what transport projects to fund. It essentially aims to figure out which projects offer the best value for money, one of the core criteria for making decisions. However, the practical relevance of cost-benefit analysis does not always live up to its appeal in principle. One problem is that there is disagreement about what to include in both the costs and the benefits side of the analysis, so that value for money is not always a fully transparent concept. A second problem is that value for money is only a partial criterion for decision-making, leading to disagreement about the relative importance of the results from CBA compared to other inputs into the decision-making process. Discussions at the Roundtable aimed to shed light on these conceptual problems by analysing the practice of CBA and comparing approaches to it in different countries. In short the aim was to identify a checklist of items that should be included in a socially relevant cost-benefit analysis, i.e. analysis that can be produced in reasonable time and at reasonable cost but is good enough to help resolve trade-offs.