Cost-Benefit Analysis for Investment Decisions: Chapter 10 (Economic Prices for Tradable Goods and Services)

In the integrated financial and economic analysis, there is a need to choose a numeraire in which all costs and benefits are expressed. The most common practice has been to express all costs and benefits in terms of domestic currency at a domestic price level. This is the natural rule to follow for the construction of the financial cash flow statement of a project that includes all the financial receipts and all the expenditures in each period throughout the duration of the project. When this numeraire is chosen to carry out the economic appraisal of the project it is necessary, however, to adjust the values of the transactions in the financial cash flow that involve internationally tradable goods because of distortions associated with the transactions of these goods and those that affect the market for foreign exchange. This chapter identifies the key distinct characteristics between tradable and non-tradable goods and provides a method for adjusting the financial values of tradable goods so that they reflect their economic values.