Optimal goals in flood management may be farther away because of the emphasis federal agencies and their academic reformers have placed upon normative economic analysis. Refinement of the benefit-cost practices has directed attention to what should be engineering investment in flood plains rather than to explaining the present use of the plains. While there is much room for improvement and while benefit-cost analysis would be enhanced by insight into managerial behavior, it detours the realistic prediction of future use. By assuming the managers of flood plain property are either optimizing, rational men, or narrow, inflexible men, it avoids difficulties that would arise were account taken of information lacks; interpretation of in-formation; differing perception of hazard, technology, and efficiency; differing decision rules; and inconsistent social guides.
Having prescribed a simple cure, there is little incentive for the government doctor to return to the bedside to find out what happened to the patient. Public doubts about economic justification are soothed by B/C ratios exceeding unity while public side-effects are largely ignored. It should not be abandoned, but the weight of its authority should not be carried unless it is used to help explain the vital question of what will be the future use if a given adjustment or use is adopted.
One day a short, sturdy Maine blacksmith, after long wooing the willowy village belle, won her consent to marriage as they talked in his shop. Enthusiastically, be jumped onto the anvil and kissed her. Then they walked hand in hand out across the meadows. "Shall we, kiss again?" he asked. "Not yet,' she said. Farther on he again put the question. "But why do you keep asking?" she replied. "Because," he said, "if there isn't going to be any more kissing, I'll stop carrying this anvil." Normative economic analysis is an anvil that can serve several Important uses, including intangible aesthetic ones, but there isn't much point in carrying its weight unless it is used properly.
Adapted from "Optimal Flood Damage Management: Retrospect and Prospect," by Gilbert F. White.
A version of this article appeared in print in the May 1967 issue of Resources magazine.
