Costs and benefits of cost-benefit analysis. Before pragmatism, back to principles

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) represents a tool for assessing the opportunity/desirability of public policy or public investment projects (PIP) which is as well-known and embedded in public practice (at least cited, if not rigorously applied) as liable to criticism ranging from i). structural distrust in its ability to capture, measure and compute subjective values attached to resources and their uses by the members of society, to ii). doubts rather concerning the continuous need to find alternative instruments in situations of obvious mismatch of CBA with the various given contexts, to iii). plea for trust in this instrument, but with great attention to the ingredients used (“better” shadow prices, “more relevant” discount rates, “more controlled” risks, “more technical robust” decision criteria). The book aims to record some of the discussions about critical revision of CBA, according to the current theory and practice.