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- Title
CHOOSING AMONG ALTERNATIVE PUBLIC INVESTMENTS IN THE WATER RESOURCE FIELD.
- Authors
Steiner, Peter O.
- Abstract
The article focuses on the problem of choosing among alternative public expenditures with particular reference to water resource development. Should the federal government have permitted the Idaho Power Co. to develop Hells Canyon or should it instead have developed a public project? If the latter, should it have built one high dam, two intermediate:size dams, or three smaller ones? Questions like these, involving the amount and form of public investments, require criteria for evaluating the investments and operational guides for applying the criteria. As a classical problem in efficient resource allocation, there is a solution that is both simple and well known. In an efficiency-oriented mold where there are no barriers to the flows of funds or resources, where "benefits" and "costs" are correctly determinable, it is evident that appropriate policy is to build every project for which benefits exceed costs and to develop every project to the point where marginal benefits equal marginal costs.
- Subjects
UNITED States; IDAHO; PUBLIC investments; PUBLIC spending; WATER resources development; PUBLIC finance; NATURAL resources; IDAHO Power Co.; COST; CANYONS
- Publication
American Economic Review, 1959, Vol 49, Issue 5, p893
- ISSN
0002-8282
- Publication type
Article