Yes / The government increased the funding for regional development agencies to £2.3 billion in 2007/8, yet hard evidence on the effectiveness of the spending is difficult to find. Techniques for valuing benefits in difficult areas have existed for many years. They range from the hedonic methods and contingent valuation studies of environmental economists to the estimates of shadow wage rates used by development economists to take account of the economic value of additional employment. The latter have been used for years in some of the poorest developing countries in the world, as well as some countries in the European Union. Meanwhile some attempts to capture the indirect benefits of regeneration spending have surfaced through the United States with the ‘Social Return on Investment’ and Local Multiplier 3, yet the proponents of these approaches do not seem to have come across the abundant literature on the use of shadow pricing in the context of developing countries. This article attempts to explore the extent to which practices used and lessons learned in the economic analysis of environmental impacts and of investments in developing countries can inform the evaluation and appraisal of regeneration projects in the United Kingdom.

Yes / Purpose – The purpose of this article is to argue that a common understanding of the terms social value, social cost benefit, social return on investment etc. would be useful for those seeking to engage with the topic in the fields of health, wellbeing and early family intervention Design/method/approach – The article considers a commissioned study delivered by the authors which reviews the literature pertinent to this field. Findings- The authors suggest that there is considerable confusion with regard to the meaning of terms which are used almost interchangeably in the fields of health, wellbeing and early family intervention. Originality/value – The authors put forward a model to provide consistency of meaning across three levels of interventions.

The use of contingent valuation (CV) methods to estimate benefits has become increasingly common in project analysis. Ever since the NOAA Blue Ribbon Panel Report in 1993 (NOAA, 1993) recommended the use of the referendum form of CV, it seems to have become the method of choice in practical settings. Referendum-type questions are thought to be easier to answer than the open-ended variety. But there is a downside: econometric techniques must be applied to the referendum data in order to infer the mean or median willingness to pay (WTP) of the sample and, thus, of the population of potential beneficiaries. This is not, however, just a technical point. Its implications are demonstrated with data obtained from a referendum CV study done for a proposed sewer and wastewater treatment project designed to improve water quality in the Tietê River flowing through the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The results show that: A factor of 4 separates lowest from highest central tendency estimates of WTP, ignoring one implausible outlier that is 14 times larger than the largest of the other figures. This variation is ample enough to make a difference in the cost-benefit analysis results for the project under conservative assumptions. Analysts that use referendum CV data must be sensitive to the problems they buy into, and decide how to deal with the resulting benefits uncertainty in their project analysis. If the principal use of CV survey data is to produce a mean or median estimate of WTP for Cost-Benefit analysis rather than to test for the factors influencing referendum choice responses and, by implication, WTP, nonparametric approaches have the advantage of simplicity over parametric approaches. / Master of Arts

Yes / This paper considers recent field evidence to analyse what online public services citizens need, explores potential citizen subsidy of these specific services and investigates where resources should be invested in terms of media accessibility. We explore these from a citizen-centric affordability perspective within three ‘exemplar’ developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank and United Nations in particular promote initiatives under the ‘Information and Communication Technologies for Development’ (ICT4D) to stress the relevance of e-Government as a way to ensure development and reduce poverty. We adopt a ‘Contingency Value’ method to conceptually outline reported citizens willingness to pay for digital public services. Hence, our focus is mainly upon an empirical investigation through extensive fieldwork in the context of sub-Sahara Africa. A substantive survey was conducted in the respective cities of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Lagos (Nigeria) and Johannesburg (South Africa). The sample of citizens was drawn from each respective Chamber of Commerce database for Ethiopia and South Africa, and for Nigeria a purchased database of businesses, based on stratified random sampling. These were randomly identified from both sectors ensuring all locations were covered with a total sample size of 1,297 respondents. It was found, in particular, that citizens were willing to pay to be able to access digital public services and that amounts of fees they were willing to pay varied depending on what services they wish to access and what devices they use (PCs or mobile phones). / European Investment Bank under the EIB-Universities Research Action Programme

This Master's Thesis aims to apply methods of investmets to project of very specialized sports facilities. It uses Cost Benefit Analysis, Criteria Indicators, Risk Analysis to assess costs and benefits of sports infrastructure project. The theoretical part deals with a sport infrastructure definition, methodological part provides theoretical basis of methods used in next practical part. This is the previously mentioned Cost Benefit Analysis, Risk Analysis, SWOT Analysis and Marketing Strategy. To define real situation, practical part contains also statistic data regarding sports facilities in the Czech Republic and government strategy documents, which serves as basis of sociological part of the analysis.

There is an obligation to hold a minimal flow when running a water power plant in a current czech legistation. There are environmental reasons to determine the minimum discharge and the way to set it is not valid at the moment. We can see a difference in a type of water power stations when comparing the effects from electric power which is produced in water power plant situated on czech rivers and the damage that does not appear on the environment. The weir type of power plant harms the surroundings mildly except of the possible migration obstacles. But the derivation type makes loss that could be hardly compensate by the produced electricity. Different methods of evaluating the enrironment brinks various results and that is the reason why it is hard to say how much the effects from producing the electricity exceed the benefits arising from instream water or vice versa. The only conclusion that can be said is the advice about including more points of view when setting the minimum flowage.

The aim of the thesis is to valuate economic effectivity of radon mitigation countermeasures co-financed by the state applied in family houses which display high radon level. Feasibility of the mitigation is analysed without concering financing source. Furthermore, the project is valuated from the point of view of the house owner and from the state's point of view. Presence of residental radon is increasing lung cancer probability, radon has notable healt effects. Costs and benefit of the hypothetic project are vauated in CBA analysis. The author finds the project unfeasible. CBA is discussed as a suitable economic tool for fiding alternative technological method aiming to social effectivity. Providing feasible change of remediation parametres caused positive social value of the project, socioeconomic flow in the state point of view would remain negative. Therefore, state participation on the radon mitigation countermeasures of private family houses is not reccomended.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Univ., 2007. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Thesis is focused on effectivity assessment of the reporting system of the selected company and the comparison of the former and current reporting solution. This is achieved by the appropriate literature research, creation of the individual assessment model based on the methodology of the analogy from the information systems assessment and based on the experience of the selected company's employees and the experience of the experts in the field of corporate financial management with the focus on the reporting systems. Model is defined by the set of criteria structured into the groups and by the weights assigned to criteria along with the value for each of them. The last phase consists of stepping out of the individual assessment and defines the generally applicable model, usable on the wide range of different reporting systems.

The aim of the final thesis Methods for IT investment evaluation and decision making is to verify relationship between strategy of the company its Enterprise Architecture and IT investments evaluation. To achieve the aim of the thesis is necessary to define the term of Enterprise Architecture and its relationship with IT Project Portfolio Management. The literature retrieval which follows after is focused on calculation of IT investment profitability and return. The calculation is very difficult due to intangible benefits which are one of the common goals of IT investments. The customer satisfaction, improve of the current business process or employees satisfaction are one of the examples of the intangible benefits. Cost/Benefit analysis is one of the methods depicted for calculation of the intangible benefits. Methods for decision support as Analytic Hierarchy Process are highlighted as the significant instrument. The risk analysis and simulation of the risk in IT investments decision making are also mentioned but according to the scope of thesis just very briefly. Major methods are used on the model example of the evaluation and decision making process to demonstrate the whole theoretical part of the thesis. The biggest added value of the final thesis is the deep analysis of the relationship between strategy of the company its Enterprise Architecture and IT investment evaluation. Entire final thesis should be used as the fundament for IT investment evaluation and decision making framework.