Cost-benefit analysis is routinely used by government agencies in order to evaluate projects, but it remains controversial among academics. The standard defense appeals to the Pareto standard or the Kaldor-Hicks standard, and assumes that agencies should respect people's actual preferences, as...

This paper analyzes cost-benefit analysis from legal, economic, and philosophical perspectives. The traditional defense of cost-benefit analysis is that it maximizes a social welfare function that aggregates unweighted and unrestricted preferences. We follow many economists and philosophers who...

Cost-benefit analysis is a widely used governmental evaluation tool, though academics remain skeptical. This volume gathers prominent contributors from law, economics and philosophy for discussion of cost-benefit analysis, specifically its moral foundations, applications,and limitations....