A recurring question about cost - benefit analysis concerns its scope. CBA is a decision-making method frequently employed in environmental policy-making, in which things which have no market price are treated as if they were commodities. They are given a monetary value, a form of price. But it is widely held that some things cannot be meaningfully priced, thus substantially limiting the scope of CBA. The aim of this paper is to test some aspects of this broad (...) claim, focusing on problems of incomparability and incommensurability. In particular, the role of rough equality as a putative form of comparison is investigated. I argue that while an assessment of the full significance of rough equality for practical decision-making awaits resolution of a number of important technical questions, it does not provide a strong enough form of comparison to support CBA. (shrink)

Cost-benefit analysis is a widely used governmental evaluation tool, though academics remain skeptical. This volume gathers prominent contributors from law, economics, and philosophy for discussion of cost-benefit analysis, specifically its moral foundations, applications and limitations. This new scholarly debate includes not only economists, but also contributors from philosophy, cognitive psychology, legal studies, and public policy who can further illuminate the justification and moral implications of this method and specify alternative measures. These articles originally appeared (...) in the Journal of Legal Studies. Contributors: - Matthew D. Adler - Gary S. Becker - John Broome - Robert H. Frank - Robert W. Hahn - Lewis A. Kornhauser - Martha C. Nussbaum - Eric A. Posner - Richard A. Posner - Henry S. Richardson - Amartya Sen - Cass R. Sunstein - W. Kip Viscusi. (shrink)

This paper conducts a cost–benefit analysis of Australia’s Covid-19 lockdown strategy relative to pursuit of a mitigation strategy in March 2020. The estimated additional deaths from a mitigation strategy are 11,500 to 40,000, implying a Cost per Quality Adjusted Life Year saved by locking down of at least 11 times the generally employed figure of $100,000 for health interventions in Australia. The lockdowns do not then seem to have been justified by reference to the standard benchmark. (...) Consideration of the information available to the Australian government in March 2020 yields a similar ratio and therefore the same conclusion that lockdown was not warranted. If Australia experiences a new outbreak, and cannot contain it without resort to a nationwide lockdown, the death toll from adopting a mitigation strategy at this point would be even less than had it done so in March 2020, due to the vaccination campaign, lessons learned since March 2020, and because the period over which the virus would then inflict casualties would now be much less than the period from March 2020. This would favour a mitigation policy even more strongly than in March 2020. This approach of assessing the savings in quality adjusted life years and comparing them to a standard benchmark figure ensures that all quality adjusted life years saved by various health interventions are treated equally, which accords with the ethical principle of equity across people. (shrink)

Cost-benefit analysis is commonly understood to be intimately connected with utilitarianism and incompatible with other moral theories, particularly those that focus on deontological concepts such as rights. We reject this claim and argue that cost-benefit analysis can take moral rights as well as other non-utilitarian moral considerations into account in a systematic manner. We discuss three ways of doing this, and claim that two of them (output filters and input filters) can account for a (...) wide range of rights-based moral theories, including the absolute notions of moral rights proposed by Hayek, Mayo, Nozick, and Shue. We also discuss whether the use of output filters and input filters can be generalized to cover other non-utilitarian theories, such as Kantian duty ethics and virtue ethics. (shrink)

Should India build a new steel mill, or London an urban motorway? Should higher education expand, or water supplies be improved? These are typical questions about which cost-benefit analysis has something to say. It is the main tool that economics provides for analysing problems of social choice. It also provides a useful vehicle for understanding the practical value of welfare economics. This new book of readings covers all the main problems that arise in a typical cost- (...) class='Hi'>benefit exercise. It is entirely up-to-date, reflecting the most recent research in the area. Part I covers the main theoretical issues affecting cost-benefit analysis. Part II considers the problem of ascribing a monetary value to things. The third part covers six separate case studies drawn from real-life examples. The book begins with an extended elementary introduction written by the editors. (shrink)

One argument against using cost-benefit analysis to justify policies aimed at promoting human life and health or protecting the environment is that it requires putting a price on priceless goods. This distorts the value of these goods, and it can affect their value by cheapening them. This argument might be rejected by a moral consequentialist who believes that a rational agent should always be able to reflect on his values, even priceless goods, and assess their costs and (...) their importance. This article defends the argument against cost-benefit analysis and suggests that a proper understanding of priceless goods shows that they also raise difficulties for consequentialist moral theories. (shrink)

The issue of assessing priorities is one that has become the subject of much debate in the National Health Service particularly in the wake of various documents on priorities from central Government. It has become even more so with the prospect of real cuts in expenditure. Economists claim that their science, or perhaps more accurately art can assist in determining not only how best to achieve various ends but also whether and to what extent competing objectives should be pursued. Such (...) choices cannot be made in the absence of some ethical considerations and it is important that health service decision makers (and in particular the medical profession) are aware if the relationship between economics (and especially cost-benefit analysis) and medical ethics. (shrink)

For many innovations, oversight fits nicely within existing governance mechanisms; nevertheless, others pose unique public health, environmental, and ethical challenges. Synthetic artemisinin, for example, has many precursors in laboratory‐developed drugs that emulate natural forms of the same drug. The policy challenges posed by synthetic artemisinin do not differ significantly in kind from other laboratory‐formulated drugs. Synthetic biofuels and gene drives, however, fit less clearly into existing governance structures. How many of the new categories of products require new forms of regulatory (...) oversight, or at least extensive forms of testing, remains unclear.Any effort to improve the governance of synthetic biology should start with a rich understanding of the different possible science‐policy interfaces that could help to inform governance. CBA falls into a subset of the overall range of possibilities, and which interface is appropriate may turn out to depend on context, on the demands of the decision at hand. In what follows, we lay out a typology of interfaces. After that, we turn to the question of how to draw upon the range of possible interfaces and effectively address the factual and moral complexities of emerging technologies. We propose a governance model built around structures that we call “governance coordinating committees.” GCCs are intended to be mechanisms for accommodating the complexities of innovations that have far‐ranging societal impacts. The production of biofuels, for example, could contaminate water supplies and have a destructive environmental impact if not managed correctly. The introduction of a gene drive could have economic and environmental impacts that are not restricted to one nation. Forging appropriate means for determining and evaluating those societal impacts, to the best of a corporation's, industry's, or government's ability, is central to responsible research and innovation. Public policy must be shaped in a manner that accommodates as many concerns as possible and minimizes risks. (shrink)

In evaluating difficult decisions which have a wide social impact, consequentialist ethics offers the most reliable footing. Consequentialism is necessary, for that matter, in order to make room for scientific input which will in turn endeavour to provide accurate and objective predictions of the effects of the decisions in question. In the final analysis, we are dealing with value-laden choices and consequentialism should not be, and in fact cannot be, reduced to one specific ethical option. For this reason a (...) political process is necessary for negotiating between the diversity of perspectives. Such a process will proceed in a more structured manner if techniques to make our ethical evaluation more explicit are used, and the furthest that can be gone in this regard is to try to reduce the various effects, as far as is possible, to one common denominator.Socio-economic cost-benefit analysis is often presented as an objective instrument for evaluating governmental decisions. As a matter of fact, however, it departs from a quite specific utilitarian option , and one which is not easy to accept. From this perspective, decisions are evaluated exclusively on the basis of the subjective advantage they bring to individuals in society. The idea of evaluating the various effects involvedin monetary terms can, nevertheless, remain of value, even when we are inclined to resist the technocratic illusion fostered by some supporters of SCBA. Monetary evaluation should certainly not be considered the last word in the discussion. On the contrary, it should be seen as a necessary reference point for the structuring of a wider ethical and political debate.In this paper I have focused exclusively on difficult governmental decisions which have significant economic aspects, i.e. where many of the effects involved can easily be evaluated in market terms. Of course, when this is not the case, the practical advantages of monetary evaluation techniques disappear. When decisions take place at a more personal level, even consequentialism will lose much of its ethical appeal. (shrink)

Cost–benefit analysis (CBA) is much more philosophically interesting than has in general been recognized. Since it is the only well-developed form of applied consequentialism, it is a testing-ground for consequentialism and for the counterfactual analysis that it requires. Ten classes of philosophical problems that affect the practical performance of cost–benefit analysis are investigated: topic selection, dependence on the decision perspective, dangers of super synopticism and undue centralization, prediction problems, the indeterminateness of our control (...) over future decisions, the need to exclude certain consequences for moral reasons, bias in the delimitation of consequences, incommensurability of consequences, difficulties in defending the essential requirement of transferability across contexts, and the normatively questionable but equally essential assumption of interpersonal compensability. (Published Online July 31 2007). (shrink)

This article proposes a cost-benefit analysis of argumentation, with the aim of highlighting the strategic considerations that govern the agent's decision to argue or not. In spite of its paramount importance, the topic of argumentative decision-making has not received substantial attention in argumentation theories so far. We offer an explanation for this lack of consideration and propose a tripartite taxonomy and detailed description of the strategic reasons considered by arguers in their decision-making: benefits, costs, and dangers. We (...) insist that the implications of acknowledging the strategic dimension of arguing are far-reaching, including promising insights on how to develop better argumentation technologies. (shrink)

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) evaluates actions in terms of negative consequences (costs) and positive consequences (benefits). Though much has been said on CBA, little attention has been paid to the types of values held by costs and benefits. This paper introduces a simple typology of values in CBA and applies it to three forms of CBA: the common, money-based CBA, CBA based in social welfare, and CBA based in intrinsic value. The latter extends CBA beyond its usual anthropocentric (...) domain. Adequate handling of value typology in CBA avoids analytical mistakes and connects CBA to its consequentialist roots. (shrink)

This research proposes a modified metaheuristic optimization algorithm, named as improved stochastic fractal search, which is formed based on the integration of the quasiopposition-based learning and chaotic local search schemes into the original SFS algorithm for solving the optimal capacitor placement in radial distribution networks. The test problem involves the determination of the optimal number, location, and size of fixed and switched capacitors at different loading conditions so that the network total yearly cost is minimized with simultaneous fulfillment of (...) operating constraints. Also, the hourly on/off scheduling plans of switched shunt capacitors considering a modified cost objective function are obtained. The proposed ISFS algorithm has been tested on two IEEE 69-bus and 119-bus RDNs and a practical 152-bus RDN. For clarifying the effectiveness and validation of the ISFS, the simulated results have been compared with those of other previously utilized solution approaches in the literature as well as the original SFS. From result comparison, the proposed ISFS outperforms other previous approaches regarding solution quality and statistical performance for the compared cases, especially in the complex and large-scale networks. Notably, compared with the original SFS, the proposed ISFS shows a significantly better performance in all the tested cases. (shrink)

Throughout the Fourth Amendment’s history, major doctrinal shifts have been driven by technological change.1 Sometimes the result has been more Fourth Amendment protection,2 sometimes less.3 And in...

What next? We are forever making decisions. Typically, when unsure, we try to identify, then compare, our options. We weigh pros and cons. Occasionally, we make the weighing explicit, listing pros and cons and assigning numerical weights. What could be wrong with that? In fact, things sometimes go terribly wrong. This paper considers what cost-benefit analysis can do, and also what it cannot.

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is inappropriate as an aid to Covid policy-making because the plural, incommensurable values at stake are not all amenable to monetary measurement. CBA for Covid policy is also undermined by pervasive uncertainty and ignorance, and has some troubling distributional implications. However, non-consequentialist alternatives to CBA tend towards implausibly absolutist prohibitions on risk imposition. Arguments for setting aside consequentialism for special circumstances (the precautionary principle, or a medical rule of rescue) are also problematic when applied (...) to Covid policy. A broad consequentialist approach to policy guidance is defended, one which does not demand commensuration on a common monetary scale. Despite the absence of commensuration, policy guidance is still possible. (shrink)

According to evidentialist views, credence in a proposition p should be proportional to the degree of evidential support that one has in favor of p. However, empirical evidence suggests that our credences are systematically sensitive to practical factors. In this article, I provide a cost–benefit analysis of credences' practical sensitivity. The upshot of this analysis is that credences sensitive to practical factors fare better than practically insensitive ones along several dimensions. All things considered, our credences should (...) be sensitive to practical factors. (shrink)

Cost effectiveness. Economics. This is an introduction, accessible to non-economists as well as to economists, to the practice of cost benifit analysis. It begins from a discussion of financial appraisal. The distinguishing features of cost benifit analysis are then introduced progressively. Practical examples are used whenever possible to aid the exposition. Economic theory is introduced only where it is immediately relevant to practice. Nonetheless the approach is firmly grounded in economic principles and considerable space is (...) devoted to those ideas that are central to practical cost benefit analysis - shadow prices, consumers' surplus, and valuation of unmarked goods. The additional needs of economically trained readers are catered for by a number of appendices which relate the ideas expounded in the book to mainstream economic theory. (shrink)

Although the standard theory and actual practice of cost-benefit analysis are seriously defective, the general idea of making social policy in accord with an aggregative, maximizing, consequentialist criterion is a sensible one. Therefore it is argued, against Bantz, that interpersonal utility comparisons can be meaningful, and, against both Bantz and MacLean, that quantitative overall assessments of expected value provide a presumptively rational basis for social choice. However, it does not follow that introducing cost-benefit tests into (...) the political or legal process would always be optimal: recognizing some quite stringent legal rights against involuntary exposure to pollution or risk may actually promote cost-beneficial results more reliably than cost-benefit tests employed in very imperfect circumstances. (shrink)

What is the proper role of cost-benefit analysis in understanding the tort concept of negligence or reasonable care? A straightforward question, you might think. But it is a question that manages to elicit groans of exasperation from those on both sides of the controversy. For most utilitarians and adherents to law and economics, the answer is obvious: to say that people should not be negligent is to say that they should minimize the sum of the costs of (...) accidents and the costs of preventing accidents. Under the economic formulation of the famous Learned Hand test, they should take a precaution if but only if the marginal costs (or burden, B) of that precaution are less than its marginal benefits (in the form of reduced risks of injury, measured by multiplying the probability (P) of the injury times the magnitude (L) of the injury if it occurs). If B>PxL, it would be absurd to require the greater expenditure, B. For many advocates of a fairness, corrective justice, rights-based, or contractualist perspective, the opposite answer is equally obvious. Permitting a person to impose risks of harm on others merely because he would thereby obtain a benefit (or would otherwise incur a burden) greater than the discounted value of the harm he might inflict, amounts to authorizing him to dump the costs of his risky activities on innocent victims. To permit this type of sacrifice of individuals on the altar of aggregate social welfare is morally abhorrent. Both sets of criticism have important elements of truth. Neither an unqualified cost-benefit analysis nor an unqualified rights-based rejection of tradeoffs is defensible - either as a description of tort doctrine and practice or as a normative prescription. However, a qualified (sensitive) consequentialist approach can accommodate legitimate criticisms of cost-benefit analysis: the consequentialist can launder preferences, and can consider the distribution of risk both in the social welfare calculus and in determining whether to compensate. At the same time, a qualified (tough-minded) deontological approach can accommodate the legitimate need to recognize tradeoffs: the deontologist can permit intrapersonal but not interpersonal aggregation of risks and benefits, can apply the concept of threshold deontology to risky activity, and can consider individual rather than population risk. I conclude that the formulation of the Learned Hand test found in the Restatement Third of Torts is broad enough to encompass each of these qualified approaches. (shrink)

This book addresses a range of relevant theoretical issues, including the possibility of an interpersonally comparable measure of well-being, or “utility” metric; the moral value of equality, and how that bears on the form of the social welfare function; social choice under uncertainty; and the possibility of integrating considerations of individual choice and responsibility into the social-welfare-function framework. This book also deals with issues of implementation, and explores how survey data and other sources of evidence might be used to calibrate (...) both a utility metric and a social welfare function, and whether distributive goals are ever best pursued through regulation rather than the tax system. In working through this range of theoretical and practical issues, the book draws from a wide variety of literatures, including philosophical scholarship on equality, responsibility, the nature of well-being, and personal identity over time; the social choice literature within economics; applied economic literatures concerning the measurement of inequality and poverty; legal and policy-analysis scholarship on cost-benefit analysis, environmental justice, and the choice between regulation and taxation; and the burgeoning field of “happiness studies”. (shrink)

Data on birth order and parent-offspring relations for 1,601 adolescents participating in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were used to test hypotheses about the role of adolescent suicidal behavior in parent-offspring conflict. Among adolescents highly dissatisfied with their mothers, the odds that middleborns would make at least one suicide attempt was 23% that of first- and lastborns (p<.001), but their odds of receiving medical treatment for their attempts was 8.5 times greater than the odds for first- and lastborns (...) (p=.032). The results are tentatively interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that adolescents use suicide attempts to leverage investment from their parents. (shrink)

President Obamas recent memorandum calling for an overhaul of White House regulatory policies provides an opportunity to revisit our reliance on cost-benefit analysis as a fundamental regulatoryprinciple.

Cost-benefit analysis is enjoying a resurgence. Despite its well documented failures in the past to cope with the environmental damage caused by major transport projects, and despite lack of progress in resolving the causes of these failures, Britain's Department of the Environment now proposes to apply it not just to projects, but to the formulation of policy. Curious.

An offshoot of decision analysis, risk-cost-benefit analysis (RCBA) dominates US policymaking regarding science and technology. In this paper a central normative presupposition of RCBA, called "the linearity assumption" is argued against. This is that there is a linear relationship between the actual probability of fatality and the value of avoiding a social risk or the cost of a social risk. The main object of this essay is to show that the presuppositions underlying the linearity assumption (...) are highly questionable. It is maintained that assessors ought to give more consideration to broadening their interpretations of "unit cost" and "societal risk" and to abandoning their claims about linearity. (shrink)

RésuméD. C. Matthew propose une critique originale et importante de l'intégration raciale. Son affirmation selon laquelle l'intégration aggravera la dévaluation phénotypique des traits typiquement noirs, menaçant l'estime de soi noire, est persuasive. Pourtant, son argument normatif le plus solide, selon lequel les Noirs devraient rejeter l'intégration puisque les dommages potentiels à leur estime de soi l'emportent sur ses prétendus avantages, est moins convaincant, car il s'appuie sur une analyse coût-bénéfice douteuse. En définitive, étant donné l'incertitude d'un processus aussi complexe qui (...) se déroule dans un avenir spéculatif, je soutiens que nous devrions, dans tous les cas, résister à la tentation d'offrir une analyse coût-bénéfice définitive de l'intégration raciale. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the utility of cost-benefit analysis in decision making, specifically environmental decision making. For the purposes of the discussion here, it uses a type of CBA that incorporates two controversial characteristics, namely, the assumption of comparability and the willingness-to-pay measure. The chapter aims to show that the recognition of a well motivated holistic decision-making strategy can shed light on debates regarding CBA. This strategy is concerned with patterns of choices rather than individual ones, and corresponds (...) with two familiar phenomena—the “pricing” of alternatives and the “embedding effect” in willingness-to-pay studies. This chapter also differentiates CBA from cost-preparedness analysis, and concludes that there need not be any inconsistency in pricing alternatives deemed incomparable and that willingness-to-pay studies can be more accurately interpreted as tracking the “preparedness to pay.”. (shrink)

Science-based methods for assessing the practical rationality of a proposed public policy typically represent assumed future outcomes of policies and values attributed to these outcomes in an idealized, that is, intentionally distorted way and abstracted from aspects that are deemed irrelevant. Different types of methods do so in different ways. As a consequence, they instantiate the properties that result from abstraction and idealization such as conceptual simplicity versus complexity, or comprehensiveness versus selectivity of the values under consideration to different degrees. (...) I hold that none of these methods is best in general. Instead, I opt for the valuation method that is useful for the policy issue in question both in terms of its relevance and in terms of its practicability. Relevance requires that the method can represent and account for what is at stake in the policy issue. Practicability refers to aspects such as easy versus difficult handling of the method. To argue for the claim, I evaluate three types of valuation methods: cost–benefit analysis that rests on unidimensional measurement and ranking, multi-criteria decision analysis that applies multi-dimensional measurement but unidimensional ranking, and non-aggregate indicator systems that operate with multi-dimensional measurement and sometimes also multi-dimensional ranking. Second-order justification indicating whether and how the valuation method chosen is capable of accounting for the substantive value considerations that constitute the real-world policy issue in question renders the conditions on which the results of a proposed policy evaluation rest transparent. (shrink)

In this paper the coherence of the precautionary principle as a guide to public health policy is considered. Two conditions that any account of the principle must meet are outlined, a condition of practicality and a condition of publicity. The principle is interpreted in terms of a tripartite division of the outcomes of action . Such a division of outcomes can be justified on either “consequentialist” or “deontological” grounds. In the second half of the paper, it is argued that the (...) precautionary principle is not necessarily opposed to risk–cost–benefit analysis, but, rather, should be interpreted as suggesting a lowering of our epistemic standards for assessing evidence that there is a link between some policy and “special bad” outcomes. This suggestion is defended against the claim that it mistakes the nature of statistical testing and against the charge that it is unscientific or antiscientific, and therefore irrational. (shrink)

The Problem Economic efficiency is naturally thought to be a virtue of social policies and decisions, and cost-benefit analysis is commonly regarded as a technique for measuring economic efficiency. It is not surprising, then, that CB analysis is so widely used in social policy analysis. However, there is a great deal of controversy about CB analysis, including controversy about its underlying philosophical rationale. The rationales that have been proposed fall into three basic, though not (...) mutually exclusive categories. There are moralist views to the effect that an acceptable CB analysis would provide, or contribute to, an ethical appraisal of proposed policies or projects. There are rationalist views to the effect that an acceptable CB analysis would contribute to the selection of social policies and projects that are “socially rational.” Finally, there are so-called management science views to the effect that the purpose of CB analysis is to promote the achievement of objectives held by the policy maker, whatever they may be. Different positions are available within each of these categories. But there is also the possibility that CB analysis lacks any viable rationale. I will examine some of the major rationales for CB analysis in this paper, and I will suggest that the last view is close to the truth. (shrink)

Proposals for the democratization of technology imply a necessary condition of universal emancipatory technological literacy. However, in the literature on the topic, people’s willingness to assume the cost in time and effort involved in acquiring that knowledge is often taken for granted. In this paper, we apply Anthony Downs’s economic theory of political action in democracy to analyze the cost-benefit ratio of this literacy from the perspective of the individual subject who should acquire it. Our conclusion is (...) that the cost does not rationally justify in an instrumental sense a benefit that, being mainly of an indivisible nature, motivates individuals to avoid their share of the cost to produce it. (shrink)

This paper defends two main claims. First: although it is easy to lose sight of this, what cost-benefit analysis really demands, in order to approve of a prospective policy, is that it be possible for those who would gain through the policy change to compensate those who would lose through it. And second: in cases where a policy change does, or can reasonably be expected to, lead to someone's death, the demand of compensability is much harder to (...) satisfy than economists typically think. More specifically, their standard move—maintaining that compensability should be judged ex ante, and that it is thus really just risk of death, not death itself, that must be (and often is) compensable—is unsuccessful. Then, the implications of these claims are briefly explored. (shrink)

Pulmonary rehabilitation has demonstrated patients’ physiological and psychosocial improvements, symptoms reduction and health-economic benefits whilst enhances the ability of the whole family to adjust to illness. However, PR remains highly inaccessible due to lack of awareness of its benefits, poor referral and availability mostly in hospitals. Novel models of PR delivery are needed to enhance its implementation while maintaining cost-efficiency. We aim to implement an innovative community-based PR programme and assess its cost-benefit. A 12-week community-based PR will (...) be implemented in primary healthcare centres where programmes are not available. Healthcare professionals will be trained. 73 patients with CRD and their caregivers will compose the experimental group. The control group will include dyads age- and disease-matched willing to collaborate in data collection but not in PR. Patients/family-centred outcomes will be dyspnoea, fatigue, cough and sputum, impact of the disease, emotional state, number of exacerbations, healthcare utilisation, health-related quality of life and family adaptability/cohesion. Other clinical outcomes will be peripheral and respiratory muscle strength, muscle thickness and cross sectional area, exercise capacity, balance and physical activity. Data will be collected at baseline, at 12 weeks, at 3- and 6-months post-PR. Changes in the outcome measures will be compared between groups, after multivariate adjustment for possible confounders, and effect sizes will be calculated. A cost-benefit analysis will be conducted. This study will enhance patients access to PR, by training healthcare professionals in the local primary healthcare centres to conduct such programmes and actively involving caregivers. The cost-benefit analysis of this intervention will provide an evidence-based insight into the economic benefit of community-based PR in chronic respiratory diseases. The trial was registered in the ClinicalTrials. gov U.S. National Library of Medicine, on 10th January, 2019. (shrink)

This article examines criticisms of cost-benefit analysis and the contingent valuation method from methodological and moral philosophical perspectives. Both perspectives argue that what should be elicited for public decisions are attitudes or values, not preferences, and that respondents should be treated as citizens and not consumers. The moral philosophical criticism argues in favour of deliberative approaches over cost-benefit analysis. The methodological perspective is here criticized for overemphasizing the importance of protest responses and anomalies and (...) biases in contingent valuation, and for failing to provide the necessary information needed to make public decisions over the allocation of scarce goods. The moral philosophical perspective is criticized for: failing to provide criteria for distinguishing between values and preferences, assuming impartiality requires expression of values and not preferences; failing to recognize the diversity of forms of expression of values, including expression of values through monetary evaluation; and assuming that cost-benefit analysis is necessarily an implementation of a utilitarian political philosophy. The article concludes by showing that deliberative decision-making mechanisms can be overly demanding on citizens, and argues for greater openness in the potential moral justifications of cost-benefit analysis. Key Words: cost-benefit analysis • values • preference aggregation • democracy • willingness to pay. (shrink)

This paper argues that even the most extensively refined comparative cost/benefit analysis must be supplemented by other factors, irreducible to it, if we are to develop an adequate framework to guide policy decisions affecting technological design and innovation.

This manuscript offers a qualitative exploration aimed at proposing effective strategies for enhancing compliance with and enforcement of labor laws in Bangladesh by diminishing the incentives for non-compliance. The study relies on primary data obtained from statutes, legal decisions, and secondary data sourced from scholarly articles, books, and book chapters, among others. Employing a cost-benefit analysis approach from the employers’ perspective, the study contends that showcasing the superior costs associated with violating labor laws, in comparison to the (...) benefits gained, will incentivize employers to prioritize compliance to safeguard their interests. To this end, the research puts forth eight distinct techniques or mechanisms to curtail the benefits derived from disregarding labor laws. These strategies are thoughtfully organized into two categories, namely “increasing the likelihood of self-enforcement” and “supporting by other actors.” The proposed techniques for enhancing compliance with and enforcement of labor laws in Bangladesh hold significant potential in benefiting key stakeholders, policymakers, and practitioners in the field. Furthermore, the study’s findings carry valuable implications for other developing countries in the South Asian region, given their similar socio-economic and cultural contexts. (shrink)