JCU Library staff are proud to announce the release of Cost-Benefit Analysis: A Practical Guide for Decision Making by Associate Professor,Taha Chaiechi – a first-of-its-kind, research-informed and practice-ready guide to navigating economic decision making in complex, real world environments.
Written specifically for the Australian context, this ebook bridges economics, behaviour and ethics and is a cross-sector resource designed to
support applied economic thinking across education, policy, and professional
contexts.
This new resource is designed for broad use across disciplines and
sectors. It offers a clear, practical, and research-informed
approach to cost-benefit analysis (CBA), while being accessible to students, professionals, and
policymakers, without requiring deep prior knowledge of economics. It also
provides a freely available alternative to the commercial texts that
currently dominate the field.
Additionally, this resource aims to redefine how CBA can be taught and
applied with key features being:
- Practice-focused and policy-relevant: Each chapter includes structured tools, examples, and exercises that help users move from theoretical understanding to practical implementation – a key asset for public policy, investment evaluation, and applied research.
- Multidisciplinary and deeply thoughtful: Chapters like Measuring the Immeasurable and Behavioural Economics and the Psychology of CBA explore the intangible, complex, and often controversial elements of value that traditional CBA models struggle to capture. These chapters bring in perspectives from ethics, psychology, and behavioural science and present strategies for integrating these insights into CBA processes.
This
ebook replaces the need for multiple commercial texts by providing a comprehensive,
research-based, and free alternative. It supports more equitable access
to economic education and policy tools and equips readers with a nuanced
understanding of both the limits and potential of cost-benefit analysis.
It’s
not just about numbers – it’s about values, impact, and better decision-making.
Cost-Benefit Analysis: A Practical Guide for Decision Making is now available from the JCU Open eBooks website.
The development of this resource was facilitated by the JCU Open Educational Resources Program
The JCU Open Educational Resources Program is a project in the Education Division, spearheaded by JCU Library. The aim of the project is two-fold:
- To support lecturers in adopting, adapting and creating Open Educational Resources including textbooks and workbooks in order to better support the learning of our students at JCU.
- To make information about the people and places of the Tropics more widely accessible and understood. More than 40% of the world's population live in the Tropics and 40% of the world's surface is within the Tropics, but the area is often underrepresented in teaching materials. The JCU Open Educational Resources Program aims to provide more access to knowledge and information about this key region.
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