(A) study on the method of benefit measurement from a public project

Abstract

There has been considerable interest in the possibility of using land value studies to estimate the benefits to be expected from a public project. In this thesis, whether the land value function can be used to determine the benefits is examined conceptually rather than empirically. It is shown that, if there are sufficient areas with different benefits of project and large number of utility-maximizing individuals so that all individuals in one area can be regarded as identical, the land value function can be used to estimate the marginal benefit of a public project without using the assumption of the identical individuals. If the study city under consideration is very large, such an assumption may be a good approximation. Further studies need be done to estimate the benefit for the nonmarginal change.