Although HS2 seems to have a positive cost-benefit ratio, there are other projects, chiefly in roadbuilding, that would provide a better return.

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Recently a detailed study conducted by the researchers at Columbia University has indicated that the cost-benefit ratio of using da Vinci surgical system to perform hysterectomies is not favorable at all.

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The cost-benefit ratio is commensurately positive.

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However, this also does not seem to be the case and is just not intuitive, especially when one considers the relatively low cost-to-benefit ratio of most employer-sponsored insurance products.

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Even the new proposed high-speed line in Britain has been shown to yield a benefit-cost ratio of around two-to-one.

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When it was first proposed, the benefit-to-cost ratio was too slim to persuade the Treasury.

ECONOMIST: Transport

Though direct revenues alone would not make Galileo profitable, adding in the indirect economic gains resulting from better navigation of land, sea and air vehicles would produce a benefit-to-cost ratio of as much as 4.6 to 1.

ECONOMIST: Space race | The