Pick up a newspaper any day and you are sure to find a story about a debate concerning the government's role in the economy. Should in come taxes be cut? Do we need to subsidize the purchase of medicine for the elderly? Is it advisable to use public land in Alaska for oil exploration? The list is virtually endless. Given the enormous diversity of the government's economic activities, some kind of general framework is needed to assess the desirability of various government actions. Without such a systematic framework, each government program ends up being evaluated on an ad hoc basis, and achieving a Coherent economic policy becomes impossible.