ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to fix some basic criteria that might be of some help in reducing the burden of applied work. The practitioner as well as the decision-maker must know precisely under which set of circumstances the predictions of appraisals are more likely to hold. Institutional decision-making routines position appraisals as a distinct phase in a sequential project-cycle. The neglect of cost-recovery issues seems to have significantly affected the poor level of prediction of appraisals on actual returns from public investments. Economic appraisals are often accompanied by distributional analyses or environmental impact assessments, aimed at completing the evaluation of project consequences. Lessons from appraisals show, after all, that rather frequently projects are revised or abandoned during their implementation phase, and one of the reasons for the policy changes is frequently the violation of some kind of social sustainability constraint.
