ON RISK DEDUCTIONS IN PUBLIC PROJECT APPRAISAL

Project appraisal under uncertainty should, in general, be worked in terms of carefully computed expected or mean values of uncertain elements. The major exceptions are when: (a) project returns are large relative to national income; or (b) project returns are highly correlated with other national income. Approximate procedures have been developed for computing risk adjustments in each of these special cases singly, but here, a more comprehensive procedure is described that encompasses both cases separately and jointly.