Papers by Gabriella Maselli
Applied Sciences
Assessing the riskiness of investments in civil works is an integral part of the decision-making ... more Assessing the riskiness of investments in civil works is an integral part of the decision-making process. The main limitation is the absence, both in the regulatory landscape and in the literature of the sector, of threshold values that can guide the analyst in expressing an assessment on the acceptance of the investment risk. The aim of the paper is to define a risk management model that overcomes this gap by introducing acceptability and tolerability thresholds for project risk. The idea is to jointly use: (i) the As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP) logic, from which the concepts threshold of acceptability and tolerability of risk derive, for the first time applied to assess the project risk in the civil field; (ii) the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and statistical methods to define an innovative methodology for estimating the aforementioned threshold values. According to the proposed approach, these risk limit values can be specified according to both the investment sec...
Energies
For informing future energy policy decisions, it is essential to choose the correct social discou... more For informing future energy policy decisions, it is essential to choose the correct social discount rate (SDR) for ex-ante economic evaluations. Generally, costs and benefits—both economic and environmental—are weighted through a single constant discount rate. This leads to excessive discounting of the present value of cash flows progressively more distant over time. Evaluating energy projects through constant discount rates would mean underestimating their environmental externalities. This study intends to characterize environmental–economic discounting models calibrated for energy investments, distinguishing between intra- and inter-generational projects. In both cases, the idea is to use two discounting rates: an economic rate to assess financial components and an ecological rate to weight environmental effects. For intra-generational projects, the dual discount rates are assumed to be constant over time. For inter-generational projects, the model is time-declining to give greate...
New Metropolitan Perspectives
Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2021
Journal of Economic Studies
PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to characterize an evaluation protocol of the social discount ... more PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to characterize an evaluation protocol of the social discount rate (SDR). This is based on the social rate of time preference (SRTP) principles, according to which the investment selection process must tend to maximize the utility of the community.Design/methodology/approachThe theoretical reference of the evaluation protocol is represented by the Ramsey formula. It is widely used in many countries with advanced economics for the SRTP estimation, through the maximization of the Social Welfare Function (SWF).FindingsThe protocol structure and the protocol applications to the Italian and US economies explain how the SDR value is influenced by the socio-economic structure of the single nation.Research limitations/implicationsThe strong variability of the results of the SDR according to the theoretical approach of reference and the operating path that follows can lead to judgments decidedly divergent on the acceptability of the public project, hence, t...
Journal of Environmental Accounting and Management
Journal of Cleaner Production
Journal of Cultural Heritage
Water Supply
The projects that concern water resources are characterized by the multiple risk rates – even ext... more The projects that concern water resources are characterized by the multiple risk rates – even extra–financial – that significantly affect their concrete feasibility. Although the risk assessment is decisive for expressing economic convenience judgements on these project initiatives, the decision-maker does not have precise references to determine whether the residual investment risk is acceptable. Thus, the purpose of the paper is to overcome the limit set by characterizing a model for the acceptability of project risk, also considering the plurality of environmental effects that the water projects generate on the community. The idea is to integrate the logic ‘As Low As Reasonably Practicable’ (ALARP) into the procedural schemes of Cost–Benefit Analysis (CBA). In accordance with this principle, widely applied in high-risk sectors such as those of industrial engineering, a risk is ALARP when the costs to further reduce it are disproportionate to the obtainable benefits. The applicati...
Sustainability
The process of allocating financial resources is extremely complex—both because the selection of ... more The process of allocating financial resources is extremely complex—both because the selection of investments depends on multiple, and interrelated, variables, and constraints that limit the eligibility domain of the solutions, and because the feasibility of projects is influenced by risk factors. In this sense, it is essential to develop economic evaluations on a probabilistic basis. Nevertheless, for the civil engineering sector, the literature emphasizes the centrality of risk management, in order to establish interventions for risk mitigation. On the other hand, few methodologies are available to systematically compare ante and post mitigation design risk, along with the verification of the economic convenience of these actions. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how these limits can be at least partially overcome by integrating, in the traditional Cost-Benefit Analysis schemes, the As Low as Reasonably Practicable (ALARP) logic. According to it, the risk is tolerable only if...
Uploads
Papers by Gabriella Maselli