ABSTRACT
Scarcity implies costs but what governs the genesis, existence, and magnitude of costs in any particular situation? Neoclassical economics is dominated by a partial-equilibrium approach in which costs are for the most part taken as given by technology or reckoned in term of forgone opportunities. But technology is only one factor governing costs. What other factors make a cost a cost? What governs which costs, out of a range of possibilities, become the socially significant or registered costs? Whose interests become a cost to someone else? Who bears what opportunity costs?
