Home MCQs Governance and Public Policy Question #10542
Back to Questions
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:
  • Is too qualitative and subjective in its methodology
  • Rejects economic reasoning in favor of political judgment
  • Cannot be standardized across different policy contexts
  • Ignores distributional effects and ethical considerations✔️
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.