ABSTRACT
To judge the value of existing institutions, to assess the effects of changes in them and to make recommendations for their improvement requires some guidelines or performance criteria. Probably most commentators would agree that the factors listed above are the main points to be considered when evaluating the impact of international institutions on world economic welfare. The economists' search for widely applicable, objective criteria shorn of interpersonal comparisons, and attempts to quantify utility and value judgements have largely been in vain. Probably, for our purposes, the most important single issue here is whether general reductions in barriers to trade are likely to increase world product without resulting in worsening the distribution of income or damaging the growth prospects of the poorer nations. To avoid this difficulty we have to employ either the assumption that the set of community indifference curves embodies a socially approved income distribution, or the Kaldor Hicks Scitovsky concept of an increase in potential welfare.
