Tables are a unique form of visualizing data because, unlike many charts, they are not usually intended to give a quick, visual representation of data. Instead, tables are useful when you want to show the exact values of your data or estimates. They are not the best solution if you want to show a lot of data or if you want to show the data in a compact space, but a well-designed table can help your reader find specific numbers and discover patterns and outliers. In this article, I present 10 guidelines for creating better, more effective tables; I then model these lessons by redesigning six tables from articles previously published in the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis.

We examine the net benefits of social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19 in USA. Social distancing saves lives but imposes large costs on society due to reduced economic activity. We use epidemiological and economic forecasting to perform a rapid benefit–cost analysis of controlling the COVID-19 outbreak. Assuming that social distancing measures can substantially reduce contacts among individuals, we find net benefits of about $5.2 trillion in our benchmark case. We examine the magnitude of the critical parameters that might imply negative net benefits, including the value of statistical life and the discount rate. A key unknown factor is the speed of economic recovery with and without social distancing measures in place. A series of robustness checks also highlight the key role of the value of mortality risk reductions and discounting in the analysis and point to a need for effective economic stimulus when the outbreak has passed.

A growing body of normative work explores whether and how deference to people’s choices might be reconciled with behavioral findings about human error. This work has strong implications for economic analysis of law, cost–benefit analysis, and regulatory policy. In light of behavioral findings, regulators should adopt a working presumption in favor of respect for people’s self-regarding choices, but only if those choices are adequately informed and sufficiently free from behavioral biases. The working presumption should itself be rebuttable on welfare grounds, with an understanding that the ends that people choose might make their lives go less well. For example, people might die prematurely or suffer from serious illness, and what they receive in return might not (on any plausible account of welfare) be nearly enough. The underlying reason might involve a lack of information or a behavioral bias, identifiable or not, in which case intervention can fit with the working presumption, but the real problem might involve philosophical questions about the proper understanding of welfare, and about what it means for people to have a good life.

Low probability risks create challenges for individual decisions and potential pressures for government regulation. This article reports original survey evidence regarding the public’s perception and valuation of water-related risks from plastic bottles with bisphenol A, residues in drinking water of the herbicide atrazine, and trace amounts of prescription drugs in water. People who believe that they face high water-related risks generally believe that the risks apply and, given that belief, are willing to pay more to limit the risk. However, the expressed willingness to pay for risk reductions is inordinately high even among those who are unsure of whether they are even exposed to the risk, and therefore may not be reliable as values for the actual benefits.

Social discounting conventions vary widely. Some differences reflect institutional constraints, but many reflect differing assumptions about how a social discount rate should be derived and applied. The divide between advocates of social opportunity cost and social time preference (STP) frameworks seems unbridgeable. There is no consensus among STP advocates on whether the social cost of funding $1 of public spending is barely more than $1 of consumption or perhaps more than $2; or on whether the covariance of public service benefits with income merits a discount rate premium that is trivial or a few percentage points. The practicalities of government fund raising are sometimes overlooked. The issues are here reviewed in the light of the literature and of experience with developing and applying social discounting regimes and extended debates within government.

This paper reviews seven contemporary official guidelines to cost-benefit analysis (CBA) with respect to eight major cost-benefit issues drawing on the latest edition of the major CBA textbook for guidance, although not complete authority. The guidelines are those by UK Treasury, European Commission, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, New Zealand Treasury, Infrastructure Australia, NSW State Treasury, and Victorian State Department of Treasury and Finance. The eight major issues discussed are the issue of standing, core valuation principles, the scope of CBA with reference to potential additional economic benefits, changes in real values over time, the marginal excess tax burden, the social discount rate, use of benefit-cost ratios, and treatment of risk. While all the guidelines are quality guides to CBA, the paper finds that there is room for improved discussion and practice at various points in each of these guidelines.

United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has regulated drinking water since the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). Congress directed it to achieve three conflicting goals: (i) establish stringent nationwide standards, (ii) ensure that these standards are both technologically and economically feasible, and (iii) accommodate significant differences in cost among water systems of different sizes with different water sources. USEPA chose to emphasize goal (i) at the expense of (ii) and (iii). In 1986, Congress intensified its preference for (i), was silent concerning goal (ii), and criticized USEPA for failing to achieve goal (iii). In lieu of economic feasibility, the Agency substituted “affordability,” defined as expenditures up to 2.5 % of national median household income irrespective of the benefits. This imposed deadweight losses, and substantial inequities on rural areas, low-income communities, and low-income households generally. In 1996, Congress directed USEPA to use benefit-cost analysis positively and normatively. Regulations issued since 1996 do not appear to comply, however. A review of post-1996 drinking water standards indicates that most were certified by USEPA as having benefits that justified costs, but these determinations were unsupported by the Agency’s own regulatory impact analyses. This article proposes that USEPA define by regulation that “economic feasibility” means marginal benefits exceed marginal costs for the smallest water system subject to SDWA, and that all future drinking water standards must be economically feasible. Economic efficiency would be greatly enhanced and the pervasive inequities of “affordability” greatly diminished. Unlike “affordability,” this definition is objective and compatible with lay intuition about the meaning of key regulatory terms.

This paper provides a Consent Justification for benefit–cost analysis (BCA). The Consent Justification is based on a tendency toward actual compensation. A substantial justification for using BCA as a tool is the actual Pareto test, called the Consent Justification, in combination with the net present value criterion for individual projects. The traditional justification, the potential compensation test (PCT), is unsatisfactory on several grounds. In addition, the PCT occupies the uneasy position of being the source of extended criticisms in the economic literature and especially in the legal and philosophy literature. The argument for the Consent Justification lies not only in the deficiencies of the PCT, but also, especially, in a showing through simulation that all tend to gain across a portfolio of projects which is not large but rather robust with respect to errors and assumptions.