Dr Christine Cote and Prof Richard Bevan

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Public Management and Governance. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

The course will be available to selected students on the MPA programmes.

The course will focus on concepts and cases relevant to understanding economic appraisal and evaluation. The course emphasises the importance of accounting for costs and benefits across different criteria, at different times, risk and uncertainty, and distributional effects; and designing economic appraisal to relate to the political process of making decisions. The course examines three methods of economic appraisal: cost benefit analysis (CBA), cost effectiveness analysis (CEA), multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA).  It explains the principles of each method and examines case studies to show their strengths and weaknesses. The aim is for students to learn that, for policy analysis, that the concepts of micro-economics are necessary but not sufficient by relating the issues that emerge from the case studies to major intellectual arguments of the 20th Century.  These are arguments over the nature of science, positivism, power, efficiency, equity, and justice. The objective is for students to learn what characterises policy analysis that is likely to succeed or fail.

15 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the MT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 piece of coursework in the MT.

A detailed essay plan on two pages with introduction, one key paragraph and conclusion written in full on the principle of using markets to assess costs and benefits and problems with this approach.

The course text is D M Hausman and M S McPherson, Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy and Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, 2006. Students will also read to extracts from standard texts on methods of economic appraisal: HM Treasury, The Green Book. Appraisal and Evaluation in Central Government, TSO, 2011; A Boardman, D Greenberg, A Vining, D Weimer, Cost-Benefit Analysis: concepts and practice, (4th Edition) Harlow: Pearson Education, 2014; P Goodwin, G Wright, Decision Analysis for Management Judgment (5th edition) Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 2014. They will read material on cases studies including N Stern, Why are we waiting?: The logic, urgency, and promise of tackling climate change, MIT Press, 2015. In addition students will be introduced to extracts from classic works of leading scholars including: J Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Oxford University Press, 1971; T S Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd edn), University of Chicago Press, 1972; IMD Little, A Critique of Welfare Economics, Oxford University Press, 1973. T C Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, Oxford University Press, 1973; KR Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge and Kegan Paul (fourth edition), 1973; R Nozick, Anarchy Sate and Utopia, Blackwell, 1974; N Daniels, Just health care. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; D W Hands, Reflection without Rules, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001; S Lukes, Power: A Radical View, 2nd edn, Palgrave, 2005. Students will also examine extracts from official reports and published papers.

Essay (90%, 5000 words) in the LT.
Presentation (10%) in the MT.

An essay of 5,000 words giving a critique of the methods used in a case study relevant to an issue in the student’s country (90%).

Presentations as a member of a seminar group in the weekly seminars (10%).