Valuation of Government Policies and Projects
Name
GovernmentValuationLucas120121out.pdf
Size
277.64 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
3e5921cfcb8f85eef6e88b8e7844b248
Author(s)
Lucas, Deborah J.
Date Issued
January 2012
Journal
Annual Review of Financial Economics
Publisher
Annual Reviews
Citation
Lucas, Deborah. “Valuation of Government Policies and Projects.” Annual Review of Financial Economics 4.1 (2012): 39–58.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Governments play a central role in the allocation of capital and risk in the economy. Evaluating the cost to taxpayers of government investments requires an assumption about the government’s cost of capital. Governments often take their borrowing rate to be their
cost of capital, which implicitly treats the market risk associated with their activities as having no cost to taxpayers. This article reviews the theoretical and practical rationale for treating market risk as a cost to governments, presents an interpretive review of the growing literature that applies the concepts and tools of modern finance to evaluating the costs of government policies and projects
and suggests directions for future research. Examples considered include deposit insurance, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending facilities, student loans, real infrastructure investments, and public pension plans.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-financial-110311-101829
