On the assessment of social benefits derived from employment policies

Abstract

Abstract The process of social reproduction gives rise to processes of exchange and distribution, whenever ultimate consumption does not occur within the production unit. Suitable choices of allocating social output between consumption and investment bring about alternative paths of accumulation that together with the prevailing institutional arrangements generate alternative distributional paths. One can express preferences between alternative accumulation paths and these preferences can be given numerical values. Whatever the choice one makes there are always capital costs involved in running an action and meeting a policy target as well as political and social costs of diverting resources to an alternative choice at the expense of others. Social costs are also known as shadow prices which reflect the fact that in general they cannot be observed directly as for instance market prices. The purpose of this study is to illustrate based on a model drawn from our current research how one can use stochastic a...