DISTRIBUTIONAL WEIGHTS
The social value of an investment may depend on who receives its benefits and bears
its costs. In Equation 11-1, consumer goods produced for the rich count as much as
for the poor. A government may express its goals of improving income distribution
by weighing an investment’s net benefits to the poor more heavily than to the rich
(U.N. Industrial Development Organization 1972:75–80, 135–148).
In the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s, the governments of Sudan, Kenya, and Tanzania,
seized land from peasants, with traditional community use rights, to transfer to “mod-
ernizing” agricultural elites, often allied with leading politicians. The transfer resulted
in more exploitative land practices and the encroachment on the livelihoods or even
the eviction of peasants. Elites often manipulate benefit–cost calculations to justify
these transfers. Decisions about interpersonal asset transfer are not amenable to sim-
ple benefit–cost calculations. The University of Massachusetts economist James Boyce