ABSTRACT
Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and a number of its offspring, such as the Goals-Achievement Matrix or the Planning Balance Sheet, can be categorized more generally as cost-utility techniques. Such techniques have the following steps in common: identification of some feasible project alternatives, predictions of the outcomes of each alternative, valuation of the outcomes in commensurate units, very often money, and choice of alternative based on some specified decision criterion. This choice may be based on fixed utility, that is gaining a pre-specified level of utility at lowest cost in choice of alternative; or a fixed budget, that is choosing, the alternative which produces the highest activity level for some pre-specified budget level. CBA is a method for assessing the desirability of prospective projects and involves the enumeration and valuation in money terms of all relevant costs and benefits, no matter when they occur or to whom they accrue.
