Was sollen wir tun? Was dürfen wir glauben? - bei DuEPublico ...

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS & COMBATING CLIMATE CHANGE 543
value of equity is duly considered. To put it another way: if side constraints put in place by
considerations of justice and equity are observed, a focus on the promotion of welfare may
well be legitimate.
Having shed light on the “economic” aspect of the term “economic efficiency” we can take the
second step of our evaluation of the ends and methodology of normative economic analysis.
This brings us to the meaning and importance of the term “efficiency”.
Jamieson claims that “[e]conomics […] cannot tell us what our goals should be or even
whether we should be concerned to reach them efficiently” (Jamieson 1992: 147). The first
part of that claim is misleading because it seems to suggest that economics wants to tell us
what our goals should be. Here we need to differentiate between the level of individual agents
and the level of policy makers. Normative economics assumes that individuals choose their
own goals and that policy makers should respect those goals by observing – and basing policy
decisions on – agents’ preferences. Further, normative economics tells us that policy makers
should be concerned with the promotion of welfare and that economics has tools at its
disposal to help them achieve that goal. In doing so, economics is not even committed to a
particular theory of welfare, but relies merely on an evidential connection between
preferences and welfare to offer a meaningful analysis.
However, the second part of the statement which implies that it might be up for debate
whether we should be concerned to reach our goals efficiently, or whether economics should
tell us one way or another, is likely a reflection of a misunderstanding regarding the concept
of efficiency. To identify that misunderstanding we should consider two meanings of the term
efficiency. First, efficiency as it is used in daily conversations and second, efficiency in the
sense of “Pareto efficiency” as it is often used within economics. I suggest that in the above
statement Jamieson seeks to imply the more common version of the term. However, I argue
that independently of which version one refers to, the importance of efficiency is difficult to
dispute.
According to the common interpretation of the term efficiency, a process becomes more
efficient as we use fewer inputs to achieve the same output, incur fewer costs to achieve the
same benefits, must sacrifice less to reach the same ends, or accept less disutility to reach the
same level of utility. Similarly a process is more efficient than another if it uses fewer
resources per unit of output independently of the specific level of output of these two
processes. Therefore, efficiency is intimately tied to whatever our ends or values are and to
whatever we see as inputs, costs, disutility, disadvantage or bads. To question whether we
should be concerned to reach our goals efficiently is almost as nonsensical as questioning
whether we should be concerned to be effective.
Similar misunderstandings about the concept of efficiency are prevalent in public discourse.
Some argue that efficiency is of paramount importance and recommend adapting production
processes such as to produce the same output with a smaller workforce or cheaper materials.
Others respond that efficiency is not obviously good as seen in the resulting higher workload
per employee or the lower quality of the output. This is not a basic argument about the
concept of efficiency but a disagreement about whether to evaluate efficiency from a private
or a public perspective. Alternatively, the disagreement can be understood as pertaining to
the question of what to count as goods and what to count as bads.
These conflicting claims reflect a fundamental difference in the interpretation of inputs and
outputs. While the producer disregards the longer working hours she does not recompense
(additional input) and the lower quality of her products (lower output) – as long as these
changes do not in turn reduce her profits – her employees and customers do not share her
private perspective. Therefore, they are correct to point out that the restructuring has not
increased efficiency from a public perspective. However, this claim does not pertain to the
question of whether efficiency as such is good or bad. It might be due to a global and socially