Dynamic Benefit Cost Ratio Criterion for Practical Sequential Ranking to Encourage Cost Control and Self Help

This paper proposes a dynamic version of the principle of ranking and selection of projects by their benefit cost ratios (BCRs). It permits a very simple and practical technique for adaptive sequential choice to provide incentives for self help, cost control, sharing and maintenance. We discuss optimality by using Pontrayagin's " maximum principle". This leads to a new criterion for judging the impartiality and optimality of any scheduling, queuing, benefit or work sharing scheme. Applications to many kinds of business enterprises, governmental or charitable organizations are indicated. For some applications we suggest the use of a new kind of coupon "money" to facilitate accounting for indivisible benefits and costs, and as a medium of exchange and store of "value".