Personal Goods, Efficiency And The Law

Dan Usher

No 985, Working Paper from Economics Department, Queen's University

Abstract: Personal goods, such as leisure and life expectancy, have no unique market price which is the same for everybody. When personal goods are arguments in the utility fucntion and when everybody's utility function is the same, the valuation of personal goods is higher for rich people than for poor people. Thus, rigidly applied in cost-benefit analysis or in the design of the law, the efficiency criterion places a higher value upon the life of a rich person than upon the life of a poor person.

Keywords: Efficiency; Law; Life Expectancy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B4 K1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 0 pages
Date: 1999-06
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Personal goods, efficiency and the law (2001)
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