ABSTRACT
Among the kinds of questions that the economist would most like to be able to answer are the more general ones; general in that they involve a comparison between alternative forms of organization of the whole economy. Popular examples are whether free trade (or some international trade, at any rate) is better for a country than “autarky” or no international trade; whether a competitive economy is better than a monopolistic economy; whether some tax systems are better than others – where better is to be understood in terms of ranking according to the Pareto criterion. Again, if there are no unambiguous answers to such questions, is it possible for the economist to specify conditions under which answers to them will be unambiguous?
