Practical issues in conducting distributional weighting in benefit‐cost analysis
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6437633 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Daniel Acland (0000-0001-7698-6986, University of California Berkeley California USA), David Greenberg (0000-0002-8746-1410, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Baltimore Maryland USA), David H Greenberg (0000-0002-6004-3171, University of Maryland, Baltimore County) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 632-662 |
| Publication date | 2025-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0276-8739 • E-ISSN: 1520-6688 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/pam.22669 |
| OpenAlex | W4408318001 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 18 |
A commonly expressed concern about distributional weighting in benefit‐cost analysis is that the informational burden is too high and the practical challenges insurmountable. In this paper, we address this concern by conducting distributional weighting on a number of real‐world examples, covering a range of different types of policy impacts. We uncover and explore a number of methodological issues that arise in the process of distributional weighting and provide a simplified set of steps that we believe can be implemented by practitioners with a wide range of expertise. We conduct sensitivity analysis and Monte Carlo simulation to test the robustness of our estimates of weighted net benefits to the various assumptions we make, and find that, in general, distributional weighting is no more vulnerable to modeling assumptions and parameter selection than unweighted benefit‐cost analysis itself. We conclude that the concern about the practicability of distributional weighting is, at least in a range of important cases, unfounded
Business · Cost analysis · Economics · Operations research · Risk analysis (engineering · Weighting · Computer Science · Economic and Environmental Valuation · Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life · Healthcare Policy and Management · Mathematics · Medicine
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Distributional Weights in Environmental Valuation and Cost-benefit Analysis
From Benefit–Cost Analysis to Social Welfare
Distributional weighting and welfare/equity tradeoffs
The Net Benefits and Residual Cost from U.S. Border Management of the Initially Inadmissible
The Elasticity of Marginal Utility of Income for Distributional Weighting and Social Discounting
Income Elasticities and Global Values of a Statistical Life
The Income Elasticity of the Value per Statistical Life
On the Use of Distributional Weights in Social Cost-Benefit Analysis
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |