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The Legal Foundation Of Cost-Benefit Analysis, Richard O. Zerbe
The Legal Foundation Of Cost-Benefit Analysis, Richard O. Zerbe
Richard O Zerbe Jr.
The foundations of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) are legal, and this understanding provides a different view of it. This paper proposes to provide a fully realized foundation for CBA. Such a foundation rests on legal rights and also amends the failure of CBA to include moral sentiments, which arose in the attempt to avoid interpersonal comparisons. This amended legal foundation largely vitiates the extreme positions that have come to dominate thinking about CBA. CBA is increasingly questioned in the legal literature, even as it is being promoted by government practice and the economics literature, and the positions that have arisen from …