IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fer/dpaper/117.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bequests and Cost-Benefit Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Niskanen, Esko
  • Glazer, Amihai
  • Kanniainen, Vesa

Abstract

Consider a public project which produces a consumption good and which benefits future generations. Let a conventional cost-benefit analysis find that it gives higher benelits than projects it would displace in the private sector. Voters may nevertheless oppose the public project. The cause of the opposition arises from the absence of property rights and from the bequest motive of parents. Private projects have owners, allowing parents to control whether their children will receive the benefits from such projects. Parents can therefore pay for services from their children by giving them title to private projects. In contrast, public projects yield benefits to future generations independently of the care children give their parents.

Suggested Citation

  • Niskanen, Esko & Glazer, Amihai & Kanniainen, Vesa, 1996. "Bequests and Cost-Benefit Analysis," Discussion Papers 117, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:fer:dpaper:117
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/148064
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    public project; bequests; property rights; cost-benefit analysis; Macroeconomic policy; Talouspolitiikka; Labor market and policies promoting economic growth; Työmarkkinat ja kasvua tukeva politiikka; D610 - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis (contingent valuation); E600 - Macroeconomic Policy Formation; Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance; Macroeconomic Policy; General Outlook: General; H500 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies: General;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E60 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fer:dpaper:117. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Anita Niskanen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vatttfi.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.