Deadline for contributions: FEB 15, 2025
The Scientific Council for Cost-Benefit Analysis at France Stratégie is glad to announce the Conference on the topic “Benefit-Cost Analysis: Distributional Issues and International Experience” to be held in Paris (France) on March 25, 2025.
The Conference
Distributional issues are important in the pursuit of a just transition, as highlighted by the IPCC, as well as the Haut Conseil pour le Climat (High Council for Climate) in France. As a matter of fact, many public projects, including public investments, are motivated by a concern for disadvantaged areas or segments of the population. Inequalities in infrastructures between districts and between cities, in connectivity to relevant economic and cultural hubs, in access to public goods and facilities, in vulnerabilities to externalities, and in environmental quality very often undergird public programs related to education, health, security or environmental preservation. Imperatives of social acceptability further justify paying attention to these aspects, and repeated protests in France about environmental regulation (“bonnets rouges”, “gilets jaunes”, farmers) have made it plain to policy-makers.
Nevertheless, in France, benefit-cost analysis, while systematically applied to public investments, usually leaves distributive impacts of the projects out of the quantitative assessment. In many other countries, in contrast, guidelines for the incorporation of distributive impacts into the computation of the net value have existed for some time. In the UK, for instance, the Green Book recommends the transparent use of weights in the aggregation of monetized impacts where distributional effects are significant and well understood. In the European Union, non-binding guidelines propose to use weights that are inversely proportional to a power function of the living standards of the relevant social groups. A particularly important 2023 revision to the guidelines published by the White House in the USA (Circular A4) has introduced the possibility for agencies to also rely on weights, and there is even a specific recommendation for the value of the coefficient that should be used in such weights, based on estimates of diminishing marginal utility.
This conference initiates an effort to improve the integration of distributive effects into benefit-cost analysis in French agencies. This conference will be followed by a revision of the guidelines based on the best practices and sound theoretical and methodological bases. Its conclusions will be a key input in the process leading to the new guidelines.
The incorporation of distributive issues is generally considered difficult not only because of the need to justify the value judgments underlying weights, and the complication implied by weighting not only the benefits but also the costs of the projects, but also because the estimation of impacts for different social groups (by area, age, socio-economic status, income) may be difficult and involve assumptions about behaviors, about adjustments of taxes and transfers to the impacts on households, and about general equilibrium effects through variations in prices and wages at the local level. The conference will cover both aspects of this topic.
Call for Contributions
The Scientific Council for Cost-Benefit Analysis at France Stratégie invites proposals for contributions to its international Conference on distributional impacts and cost-benefit analysis. Submissions in the form of an extended abstract of about 400 words should be sent to jincheng.ni@strategie.gouv.fr before February 15, 2025. Notification of decision will be received by February 22, 2025.
Participation Costs
Participants will be requested to cover their transportation and lodging costs but there is no registration fee. Participants to the seminar, which takes place in the afternoon, are also invited to attend the morning conference.
Preliminary Programme
09:00 Welcome and introductions
09:15 Keynote : Equity in benefit-cost analysis, from principles to practice
Luc Baumstark (University of Lyon) and Marc Fleurbaey (Paris School of Economics)
10:00 Break
10:15 Round table 1: Distributive impacts in the computation of a net present value: international experience
Ben Groom (Exeter), Massimo Florio (Università degli Studi di Milano), Danaé Arroyos-Calvera (Birmingham), Doramas Jorge Calderon (European Investment Bank)(TBC)
11:30 Round table 2: Identifying relevant social groups and estimating distributive impacts
Antoine Bozio (Paris School of Economics), Maria Börjesson (Linköping University), Susana Mourato (LSE)(TBC)
12:45 Closing words
13:00 Lunch for invited participants
14:00 Seminar on the equitable future of cost-benefit analysis
17:30 End of seminar
Organising Committee
The Organising Committe members are Luc Baumstark, Frédéric Cherbonnier, Marc Fleurbaey, Pascal Gautier, Jean-Michel Josselin, Yann Kervinio, Jincheng Ni, Jean-Paul Ourliac, Aude Pommeret, Emile Quinet, Nicolas Riedinger, Katheline Schubert.
