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Assessing the Cost-effectiveness of Environmental Policies in Europe

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Citation

Benjamin Görlach; Eduard Interwies; Jodi Newcombe and Helen Johns 2007: "Assessing the cost-effectiveness of environmental policies in Europe", in: Clive George and Colin Kirkpatrick (eds.): Impact Assessment and Sustainable Development. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 185-215.

Economic analysis for policy appraisal is generally interested in answering two questions, "is a given policy objective worth achieving" and if so, "has the policy objective been achieved in the most cost-effective way?" While the first question is addressed in a cost-benefit analysis (CBA), the second question can be answered with the help of a cost-effective analysis (CEA). The authors of this book chapter focus on ex-post CEA and reveal problems, challenges and opportunities of CEA at the European level.

They provide an overview of legal requirements for ex post CEA in European environmental policy, and summarize the guidance documents and manual for carrying out ex post CEAs. Furthermore, they present selected case studies of applied ex post CEA for environmental policy measures, and provide an interpretation of the results. Finally, they conclude and suggest a number of recommendations.

This publication is a result of the project Cost-Effectiveness of Environmental Policies, which Ecologic conducted in 2005 on behalf of the EEA, together with IVM and eftec.

More content from this project

Language
English
Authorship
Eduard Interwies
Jodi Newcombe
Helen Johns
Published in
Book: Impact Assessment and Sustainable Development
Published by
Year
Dimension
31 pp.
ISBN
1845427874
978-1845427870
Project
Project ID
Table of contents
Keywords
environmental policy, cost-effective analysis, CEA, cost-benefit analysis, CBA, legal requirements, ex post, ex ante, impact assessment
Europe

Source URL: https://www.ecologic.eu/2003