Implementing Cost‐Benefit Analysis when Preferences are Distorted
本文论证成本效益分析作为福利主义决策程序，在偏好扭曲（如无信息、适应性偏好）时仍优于其他方法，并给出政府机构修正偏好的条件，如折现客观坏偏好、按财富区别对待。
Cost‐benefit analysis is routinely used by government agencies in order to evaluate projects, but it remains controversial among academics. This paper argues that cost‐benefit analysis is best understood as a welfarist decision procedure and that use of cost‐benefit analysis is more likely to maximize overall well‐being than is use of alternative decision procedures. The paper focuses on the problem of distorted preferences. A person's preferences are distorted when his or her satisfaction does not enhance that person's well‐being. Preferences typically thought to be distorted in this sense include disinterested preferences, uninformed preferences, adaptive preferences, and objectively bad preferences; further, preferences may be a poor guide to maximizing aggregate well‐being when wealth is unequally distributed. The paper describes conditions under which agencies should correct for distorted preferences, for example, by constructing informed or nonadaptive preferences, discounting objectively bad preferences, and treating people differentially on the basis of wealth.