Economic calculation and democracy

Yves Crozet ()

Cahiers d’économie politique / Papers in Political Economy, 2004, issue 47, 155-172

Abstract: Economic calculation, and especially cost benefit analysis (Coba), is more and more criticised and accused to be technocratic and partial, leading to a narrow view of projects. An example of this loss of credibility is the New Approach To Appraisal (NATA), implemented in Great Britain at the end of the 90': a multicriteria analysis where Coba gives only one information among many others, quantitative and qualitative. Nevertheless we don't think that we are facing an unavoidable decline of economic calculation. This paper emphasises the important role that Coba can keep within the public decision process. If we remember Keyne's and Schumpeter's points of view about the roles of forecasting and prices, economic calculation could be useful to help the emergence of collective choices, even in the controversial field of transport infrastructures.

JEL-codes: H43 H54 R14 R42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cairn.info/acheter_article.php?ID_ARTICLE=CEP_047_0155 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpo:journl:y:2004:i:47:p:155-172

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
142 rue du faubourg Saint-Martin. 75010 Paris, France.

Access Statistics for this article

Cahiers d’économie politique / Papers in Political Economy is currently edited by Claire Pignol

More articles in Cahiers d’économie politique / Papers in Political Economy from L'Harmattan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Carlos Andrés Vasco Correa ().