Project Appraisal and Foreign Exchange Constraints
探讨美国项目评估与外汇的复杂性，指出政府同时优化所有可控变量的假设不具说服力，并分析在价格和工资不灵活时政府行为的关键作用，证明在一般条件下次优最优仍以整体生产效率为特征。
This article focuses on the complexities involving project appraisals and foreign exchanges in the U.S. It is convenient to suppose that the government simultaneously optimizes with respect to all variables within its control, and it is the implication of this supposition that has been explored in much of the recent literature on project evaluation. But as a model of government behavior it is not persuasive. Moreover, the analysis of government behavior becomes critical in situations where prices and wages are not perfectly flexible. A full-Optimum allocation of resources is, under quite general circumstances, characterized by overall production efficiency for the economy. If trade possibilities exist these are included as production options. Distorting taxes are then a device by which the government can hope to increase social welfare. It is then possible to show that under fairly general circumstances a second-best optimum is characterized again by overall production efficiency.