International cost-benefit analysis
The project reports are designed to build up to the final report. Your CBA report grade will be based on the team’s final product. I provide rubrics for the project reports to help you pay attention to the right things – not to grade you.
Describe the issue you are tackling in your CBA, and lay out a plan for completion. Please prepare a 4-6 page double-spaced report that describes the issue being addressed in the project and sketches a plan for completion. Think of this as a first draft of your introduction, plus a plan outline.
| Criteria | Excellent | Good | Fair | Poor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organization | Report is clear and logical. Reader can easily follow line of reasoning. | Report is generally clear. A few minor points may be confusing. | Reader can follow with effort. Organization is not well thought out. | Report is very confusing and unclear. Hard to follow. |
| Presentation & style | Style is appropriate for a formal brief. Not too casual. Language does not hinder reader’s ability to follow. No typos. | Style is generally appropriate. May contain some issues. Minor grammatical or typographical errors. | Report is too informal or unprepared. Difficult to understand. Much of the information lacks focus and clarity. Multiple typos or poor overall editing. | Report is consistently at an inappropriate level. Information is poorly synthesized. Difficult for reader to understand the point. Last-minute, not proof-read. |
| Content: accuracy | Information given is accurate and backed up by facts. Sources are appropriately cited (no webpage URLs please!). | Information contains no significant errors but some sources are unclear or poorly cited. | Some components lack sources or are incorrect. Enough errors to distract the reader, but some information is accurate. | Information is so inaccurate or poorly cited that reader cannot depend on the reported results and work. |
| Content: depth | Sources cited and information used comes from a variety of sources and is clearly synthesized and presented. The problem statement is well-justified by the sources. | Sources cited and information used are generally described in a clear manner. Reasonable connection between information and problem statement. | Some components missing or minimally developed. Little discussion of problem statement in a broader context. | Connection between project statement and the relevant information is very difficult to follow. Sources cited are few and/or irrelevant. |
Prepare a complete report on the data that you have from your client, as well as other data sources. Show clearly that you have begun working with and understand the data.
I encourage you to present summary statistics and basic figures describing your data. Describe how you plan to use the data to compute costs and benefits and note any data sources that you are still missing or assembling.
This third project report involves producing a draft list of the alternatives that your CBA will consider, together with the categories of costs and benefits that you plan to include in your analysis. Further, you should begin specifying how you will measure these different costs and benefits.
Successful completion of this assignment will feed directly in to the overall course objectives of learning
At the top of your report, please list and briefly describe the various alternatives that you are considering in your CBA.
Second, please produce a table briefly describing the cost and benefit categories, and which alternative you expect them to occur in. For example, you can indicate this with Xs and/or rough timelines as in the Table below describing a CBA centered around the example of invasive species management.
| Status quo | Alternative 1 - species control | Alternative 2 - species eradication | |
| Costs | |||
| Fixed implementation cost (e.g., investment in durable tools used to kill the invasive) | X (one-time purchase) | ||
| Marginal implementation cost 1 (e.g., labor costs associated with controlling an invasive species, protective equipment for workers, herbicides) | X (in perpetuity) | X (only the first 10 years) | |
| Marginal implementation cost 2 (e.g., yearly information campaign to encourage local population to help combat the invasive) | X (in perpetuity) | X (only the first 5 years; after that population will have dwindled) | |
| Benefits of control | |||
| Reduced health effects from invasive (it is a known vector for leptospirosis) | |||
| Increases in rare local flower population (the invasive species likes to eat the rare local flower) | X | X (increasing over the time period; after 10 years the invasive species is eradicated & flower population reaches steady-state) | |
| Increases in tourism (tourists like to see the rare flower, and don't like the invasive species) | X | X (more than in control scenario) | |
Once you have this table, please systematically describe the different cost and benefit categories in more detail.
Begin to sketch out how you will measure each of the categories, and where the data will come from. Be careful to note whether costs are one-time or ongoing. Also note that the main point of this assignment is to help your team plan for the remainder of the semester.
In other words, while you should do your best with the assignment, don’t freak out if you are unable at this point to produce a perfect report – you will keep working on this for the rest of the semester!