ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the broad economic issues which underlie intervention in general and to develop a framework for the appraisal of particular planning policies. It is concerned with the general principles which should guide the analysis and formulation of advice on choices in land-use planning. The chapter considers the rules which should guide an authority in making the choices entailed. It analyses a small number of basic principles which should underlie the analysis of public policy if it is to serve any political process well. In categorising policies, the extreme cases are easy; some policies can fairly readily be categorised as efficient or inefficient and others as being mainly distributional in impact. The model that is used to 'explain' or describe the behaviour of producers and consumers is frequently called the rational model.
