Jiang Wei, Marggraf Rainer
State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 18 Shuangqing Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100085, China.
Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, University of Göttingen, Platz Der Göttinger Sieben 5, 37073, Göttingen, Germany.
Cost Eff Resour Alloc. 2021 Nov 18;19(1):74. doi: 10.1186/s12962-021-00330-3.
Cost-benefit analysis (CBA), as a common instrument in the decision making process on how to allocate financial resources, has been widely used in various research areas and in almost all of countries over the world. However, the origin and the historical development of CBA has long been subject to neglect. We attempt to fill this gap and clarify the origin and the early development of CBA.
A comparative analysis is used to investigate the origin and the early development of CBA in France and the USA. The comparison is focused on two questions: (1) which criteria should be applied to decide whether or not a project should be carried out, and (2) with which procedure these criteria can be used for real projects.
The origin of CBA can be dated back to the work of Saint-Pierre in France in 1708. Dupuit introduces the concept of consumer's surplus that founds the economic basis of CBA. These works are not taken seriously in France and do not draw attention from other countries. Hence, until the 1930s, the principle of CBA is newly proposed in the US and the Green Book marks the mature of CBA.
The early development of CBA in France and the US is independent from the aspects of historical background, personnel, approaches and standardization. This study could help researchers of various disciplines be sure about the history of CBA when they perform this analysis in their research areas.
成本效益分析（CBA）作为决策过程中关于如何分配财政资源的一种常用手段，已在世界上几乎所有国家的各个研究领域中广泛使用。然而，CBA的起源和历史发展长期以来一直受到忽视。我们试图填补这一空白，并阐明CBA的起源和早期发展。
采用比较分析的方法来研究法国和美国CBA的起源和早期发展。比较集中在两个问题上：（1）应采用哪些标准来决定一个项目是否应该实施，以及（2）这些标准可通过何种程序用于实际项目。
CBA的起源可以追溯到1708年法国圣皮埃尔的著作。杜普伊特引入了消费者剩余的概念，这为CBA奠定了经济基础。这些著作在法国未受到重视，也未引起其他国家的关注。因此，直到20世纪30年代，CBA的原则才在美国被重新提出，《绿皮书》标志着CBA的成熟。
CBA在法国和美国的早期发展在历史背景、人员、方法和标准化等方面是独立的。这项研究可以帮助各学科的研究人员在其研究领域进行这种分析时确定CBA的历史。
