Browsing by Person "Mayer, Mark Alexander"

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Zur Methodik entscheidungslogisch korrekter Wirtschaftlichkeitsuntersuchungen der öffentlichen Hand
(2023) Mayer, Mark Alexander; Troßmann, Ernst
For the public sector, the principle of economic efficiency must be considered when making investment decisions. It has been shown that public investments affect a variety of objectives. In contrast to private decision makers, the public sector must not solely consider financial objectives. To comply with the principle of economic efficiency as an adequate basis for decision making, economic studies must take into account these diverse objectives of public investments. The published Guidelines, ordinances, and laws on economic analysis do not meet this requirement, nor do economic cost-benefit-analyses. To develop a decision-logical methodology for economic analysis a distinction is made between choice decisions that relate to alternative projects and program decisions that relate to alternative project bundles (programs). The financial objective is interpreted in a special way: it is seen as an opportunistic objective. Rather than an origin benefit, it represents the missing or additional benefit of a displaced or additional investment. This relationship is made explicit in investment program decisions. In choice decisions it must be estimated. A utility analytical approach is used to solve the decision problem on choice decisions. Therefore, nonfinancial objectives are processed directly, while the financial objective is processed by an isolated dynamic investment model. To enable a consistent consideration of temporally differentiated effects, a decision-logically design of a dynamic utility analysis was developed. To consider the financial objective, an investment model was chosen that adequately captures comprehensive effects of investment activity on the financial situation of the public decision making unit: the generalized market interest method according to Troßmann. First, it was made usable for public investments. Then the method was adapted, so it can use different reference points in time. This enables a differentiation of the planning period, which can be used to build appropriate models in the case of long-term investments. Because alternative approaches for integrating the financial and the nonfinancial objectives in one utility analysis are not acceptable, only an omni criterial dynamic utility analysis can be recommended for making public choice decisions. In its basic structure, linear programming models are used for public program decisions. The target function maximizes the utility indicator, which is created using a dynamic utility analysis. The constraints ensure that for all periods investment budgets are complied with. The model was designed to support decisions about the beginning of the project, which on the one hand better corresponds to the practice of medium-term budget planning and on the other hand significantly increases the possibilities in the composition of the optimal investment program even within tight financial budgets. Various implementation conditions require the use of a mixed integer planning model, for which it was shown that an optimal solution can be found after a short computation time even for very extensive models. All in all, this results in two decision-logical modelling proposals for investment decisions in the public sector, which were illustrated by a comprehensive case study. If cleverly combined, they can also be used to deal with the entire investment planning task in the public sector. Combining these well-known methods in business administration into a fundamentally new approach offers starting points for further research. The next step towards results, that are utilizable would be the integration of uncertainty.