Efficiency and Distributive Weights

Abstract

Chapter 1 indicated that there are two fundamental normative judgements underlying what we might term ‘conventional’ CBA which we have formalised in terms of the net benefit criterion in Chapters 3 and 4. These judgements were (a) that consumer preferences count, and (b) that the existing distribution of income is, in some sense, ‘optimal’. We now need to investigate this second judgement more closely.