Cost Benefit Analysis and Risk Assessment Essay
Introduction:
With regards to environmental policy, it is important for governments to consider concepts such as
risk, economic efficiency and cost benefit. A common concern voiced by proponents of regulatory
reform in recent decades has been that the costs associated with certain regulations outweigh the
benefits that the regulations are intended to provide (Tengs Graham, 1996). Another, and somewhat
related, view is that, more intelligent regulatory policies could achieve the same social goals (e.g.,
cleaner environment, safer workplaces) at less cost, or could achieve more ambitious goals at the same
cost (Tengs Graham, 1996). For the reasons above, Federal Agencies, have invested in using tools
such as the cost benefit analysis and ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...
For the latter, we must calculate net, marginal as well as total benefits (pg, 209, Vig Kraft, 2013).
Economic efficiency requires that we find the policy that will give us the greatest net benefits the
biggest difference between total benefits and total costs (pg.208, Vig Kraft, 2013). In this case the total
benefits are considered as the total benefits of reducing pollution (pg.208, Vig Kraft, 2013).
Perhaps, several concerns that Congress may have when using the cost benefit analysis are: assuring
greater consistency in techniques, defining the respective roles of cost benefit and other related
evaluation frameworks; and significantly increasing funds to do these analyses in a timely way
(Moore, 1995) . Moreover, critics of benefit cost analysis object to placing a dollar value on
environmental goods, suggesting that these priceless resources are devalued when traded in monetary
terms (pg, 209, Vig Kraft, 2013) . Although no economic argument can suggest whether explicit or
implicit consideration of benefits and costs is ethically preferable, the cost benefit analysis is used as
one of many inputs to the consideration of policy choices (pg, 209, Vig Kraft, 2013). In fact, it is
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