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Governance and Public Policy
QUESTION #10542
Question 1
Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) as a policy tool is most commonly criticized on the grounds that it:
Correct Answer Explanation
The primary critique of Cost-Benefit Analysis is that by reducing all values to a single monetary metric, it ignores how costs and benefits are distributed across different social groups (equity concerns) and fails to capture non-monetizable values (dignity, rights, environmental intrinsic value). A policy can show a positive net benefit while making the poor worse off — a distributional outcome CBA tends to obscure.
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