Capital Budgeting Practices & Economic Development

Over the years, efforts have been made to increase the developmental strides of African countries. Many projects move from donor countries in the western world into Africa to help improve the lives of the people. However, these efforts have not been able to redeem Africa from abject poverty and indebtedness to the West. Various projects that are targeted towards the reduction of poverty are normally completed with no changes in the lives of the people. These projects, in my opinion, have not been scrutinised to assess their capabilities of meeting some stated target. This book compares the use of capital budgeting techniques by companies in three Western European countries and three West African countries, using data from firms in Western Europe and West Africa. The main aim is to analyse the use of capital budgeting techniques by companies in both economic blocs from a comparative perspective to see whether economic development matters in the choice of which technique to use. The empirical evidence show that Western European CFOs on average use more sophisticated capital budgeting techniques than their counterparts in West African.