ABSTRACT
One curious aspect of most CBA practice is its neglect of distributive analysis, i.e. the welfare assessment of who gets the benefit and who bears the social cost of a public project or policy. This is in contrast with the ambition of Applied Welfare Economics to look into the comprehensive socio-economic impact of public investment and policy decisions. The debate on introducing welfare weights (also called distributional weights) in the CBA, in order to take into account not only efficiency but also equity aspects, is an old one. However, the topic is still under discussion and in evolution since some questions remain unsolved. While a traditional approach to Welfare Economics has considered impossible or misguiding the inclusion of distributional effects in project and policy evaluation, a large proportion of professionals consider this aspect a significant one.
