Essay on public investment criteria and the role of cost benefit analysis in the implementation of economic planning for economic development in India - criteria include consumption benefits, costs, time factor, interest, budgetary constraints, risk and dynamics. References pp. 100 and 101.

​This volume presents the most robust and useful methodology for the measurement of the economic effects of public investments. This methodological approach solves inherent defects of the traditional methodology, namely, an ad hoc application of the cost---benefit ratio analysis based on a simple summation of itemized economic effects on public investment criteria. In particular, it comprehensively solves (1) leakage and duplication of economic effects calculated; and (2) arbitrariness of the public investment choice set. The methodology adopts the general and dynamic simulation approach and solves defect (1). Secondly, the assignment of the public investment budget for all the possible and not predetermined investment targets is endogenously optimized to reflect the opportunity cost criterion. Applications of the methodology are also included in the book, which is helpful for practitioners as well as experts who wish to learn about the meaning of the theoretical argument related to public investment, including economic effects and the opportunity cost criterion.

This book, first published in 1967, explores some of the problems formulating investment criteria for the public sector of a mixed-enterprise, underdeveloped economy. The typical essay on public investment criteria explicitly or implicitly postulates a single goal for economic analysis – maximization of weighted average of national income over time – and relegates all other objectives of public policy to a limbo of "political" and "social" objectives not amenable to systematic, rational treatment. In contrast Professor Marglin assumes a multiplicity of objectives and explores ways and means of expressing contributions to different objectives in common terms. The book also investigates the relationship of specific investment criteria to the objectives of public policy. Benefits and costs are defined separately for each objective, as are so-called "secondary" benefits. This book is suited for students of economics.