Only Cass Sunstein could present cost-benefit analysis as a prism for understanding democracy, an exciting research frontier, and a route to a better world. The world will be a better place if the next president of the United States thinks hard about this important book.
Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus, Harvard University
Cost-benefit analysis may not have all the answers, but Cass Sunstein's eminently readable The Cost-Benefit Revolution addresses all the right questions. No one in America has thought more deeply about the strengths, weaknesses, and underpinnings of cost-benefit analysis from both a theoretical and practical level than Cass Sunstein. This book will surely pass your personal cost-benefit test.
Alan Krueger, Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University
Cass Sunstein's enlightening volume makes a compelling case that systematic assessments of benefits and costs should become even more ingrained in government policymaking. In addition to drawing on his substantial regulatory expertise, Sunstein deftly explores novel policy terrain ranging from national security to free speech.
W. Kip Viscusi, University Distinguished Professor, Vanderbilt University; author of Pricing Lives: Guideposts for a Safer Society and Economics of Regulation and Antitrust
Sunstein has been leading the cost-benefit revolution, and here he explains how it is making the world a better place. If that weren't enough, this must-read lets readers into one of the world's most important minds.
Michael Greenstone, Milton Friedman Professor of Economics, University of Chicago
One of the very best Cass Sunstein books, the product of decades of reflection, remarkably well thought out on every page to an extent which is rare these days.
Marginal Revolution
In the excellent historical sections describing the (non-partisan) spread of CBA in US government, Sunstein gives some persuasive examples of how to use CBA well... It's worth the read for anyone interested in the role of reason in policy making.
Diane Coyle, The Enlightened Economist
Clear, well-argued....As Sunstein notes, cost-benefit models have become progressively less wrong and more useful over time, and will surely continue to improve. The cost-benefit revolution may be incomplete and its pace of progress uncertain, but it's far from over. ¡Viva la revolución!
Forbes Online
The book makes three valuable contributions: it relates the history of cost-benefit analysis in US policymaking; it tackles the economist Friedrich Hayek's argument that technocrats simply don't know enough to weigh costs and benefits; and it makes a case that cost-benefit analysis could reduce political tribalism.
Financial Times
[Sunstein's] insights and conclusions are broadly applicable to wherever benefit-cost analysis is practiced...Sunstein thinks deeply, writes engagingly, and is often provocative...[The Cost-Benefit Revolution] is likely to lead to much interesting debate as well as to new developments in the field.
Lisa A. Robinson
Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis
