Accounting for Consequences and Claims in Policy

Abstract

Fully appraising any policy requires us to capture all of its ripple effects and not simply the size of the splash when the pebble of intervention hits the water. It also requires that we weight the value of those effects according to morally relevant characteristics of people, such as their age. In this paper, I discuss the consequences that should feed into policy appraisal and the claims that different groups may have on resources.