ABSTRACT
The findings of a cost-benefit study are properly regarded as a contribution to the political decision-making process, a contribution, incidentally, that governments and their public continually demand and whose significance they perhaps tend to overrate. Alternatively, the weighting system can be made dependent upon political decisions taken in the recent past. One way of doing this, first proposed by Weisbrod, rests on the assumption that all public projects that were adopted, notwithstanding their failure to meet cost-benefit criteria. By comparing a number of such projects, these utility weights can be made explicit and, perhaps, become incorporated into the economist’s cost-benefit criterion. If the economist elects to use a contrived cost-benefit criterion, using a system of weights and possibly also politically directed valuations. In particular, wherever an investment project that appears to be advantageous by ordinary cost-benefit criteria causes particular hardship to some groups, the economist should consider the practical possibilities of adequate compensation.
