The Ethical Poverty of Cost-Benefit Methods : Autonomy, Efficiency and Public Policy Choice

This is an early article of mine that argues that cost-benefit methods, although claiming to empower human 'autonomy', does not have an adequate basis in moral principle to protect more than a 'thin' and morally impoverished ethical standard of judgement promoting Kaldor Efficiency. This limits efficiency, as a principle of policy choice, to the consideration of public means alone, eliminating cost-benefit as a fit approach to policy analysis while simultaneously promoting cost-effectiveness analysis in the search for an independent moral standard for the assessment of public ends