CRITERIA FOR UNDERTAKING WATER--RESOURCE DEVELOPMENTS.

The article offers a few comments on criteria for undertaking water resource developments in the U.S., in the context of a concern with sorts of social priorities which various alternative criteria may express or implement. Author's attention will center on four issues which are either treated or neglected in received writings, namely the general investment criterion, as defined in terms of the relation of benefits to costs and as made specific for assumed constraints on the investing agency's budget, the interest rate to be used, by way of making this criterion articulate, in discounting future benefits and costs, the timing of investment and the avoidance of premature investment and the influence of procedures in benefit calculation on the design of projects, with especial reference to the role of so-called intangible benefits. The government should undertake welfare increasing investment in areas in which private enterprise is institutionally discouraged from undertaking it at all or in requisite amounts or ways.