Do Economists Overemphasize Monetary Benefits?
本文回应非经济学家对经济学家过度强调金钱利益的批评，指出成本收益分析作为福利经济学分支，实际上已涵盖健康、环境等非货币因素，并解释误解源于将经济学等同于金钱。
Over the last 20 years benefit-cost and other applied micro-economists have become more and more prominent in political and administrative processes. Throughout this period non-economists have criticized the modus operandi on a number of grounds, but one of the prevalent has been the charge that economists overemphasize the narrowly economicmoney and the things that it will buy. Back in the heyday of the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS), Frederick Mosher, writing in this journal, stressed the dominance of thinking in that system and argued that most public activities are carried on for social purposes and their aspect is only one, sometimes a minor one, in the total vision. With respect to objectives, Mosher noted that they are essentially expressions of values and indicated that he was sure that most of us would not be satisfied to leave the allocation of values to analysis.' A few years later Ida Hoos used even stronger language when she asserted that may represent the disastrous . . . triumph of rationality over the political and social rationality which reasonably, logically, and necessarily belong in government on resource allocation. 2 Though PPBS has faded away, except for vestiges in the Department of Defense and in many subsequent practices, analysis remains every bit as influential, and controversy still surrounds it. In a recent article Susan Tolchin suggests that the benefit-cost analysis of social regulations conducted by the Office of Management and Budget often ignores the benefits that flow from clean air and good health. Tolchin goes on to argue that while costs and other should be assessed in making regulatory decisions at least equal weight should be given to health, safety, and environmental impacts.3 Economists rarely deign to answer their critics in print, but if one asks them to respond to comments like those voiced above, they generally meet them with indignation and derision. Economists wonder where people get the idea that analysis ignores social and political purposes or that economic factors do not include health and environmental impacts. They suspect that their critics join many laymen in simply equating economics with money and purchasable goods and services. The economists explain that benefit-cost analysis is an applied branch of welfare economics and that, as the name suggests, welfare economics' concern