ABSTRACT
The Papers and Proceedings of the Commission on the Third London Airport (the Roskill Commission) run to nine volumes, covering between them the first three stages of the commission’s planned procedure. Under review here is the seventh volume, pertaining to Stage III. 1 It runs to over 500 pages, and embodies both the method of approach and the quantitative assessment of the commission’s research team led by Mr F. P. Thompson, an economist formerly employed in the Ministry of Transport. I doubt whether an economist who, like myself, has had no hand in the writing of this volume could become familiar with all the aspects discussed in less than a couple of months of uninterrupted study. Nor would he be able to check all the calculations in less than about six months, and then with a goodly amount of research assistance. Since I can claim only to have perused a number of chapters - though I believe they are the more important chapters - the overall impressions left on me have to be regarded as provisional only. Some of my more critical judgments, however, in particular those in sections HI and IV, are put forward with less reservation, since they were reached only after a close scrutiny of the text. And the more general reflections at the end of this review depend neither on my overall impressions of the Roskill Report nor on the more critical findings. They arise from a consideration of the relevance of such cost-benefit evaluations for the world we are living in.
