I'll agree that the profession has not (according to MY utility function) shown enough interest in "distribution" as opposed to "efficiency," but I'd argue that it for three reasons.
a) It is, with the tools and data available, more difficult to know who will benefit from an economic policy change (even if we are willing to value income differently according to the person to whom it accrues) than how much the aggregate of the net benefits and costs will be.
b) Historically the profession developed considering economic policy changes -- elimination of the Corn Laws in England or the parody "Petition of Candle Makers" the being prototypical examples where there seemed to be no tradeoff between distribution and efficiency. The idea that the rabble would seize control of the state and transfer income to themselves in inefficiently leaky buckets is a recent and still largely fantastical notion.
c) Although full distribution effects are harder that measuring total net benefits, there are often immediate, visible, and highly concentrated distributional effects for self-identified groups that policy makers may seize on that DO have widely distributed aggregate costs. Banging on the aggregate efficiency drum is a useful reflex.
My criticism of the profession is rather that it has been too timid about advancing efficiency arguments, accepting too easily the Overton window of the day. Merit based immigration, deficit reduction, the tax code from top to bottom, health insurance, taxation of net CO2 emissions, congestion and use pricing of streets and roads, pricing of water rights, urban land use regulations and building codes, cost-benefit analysis of regulation in general deserve more green-eyeshade economic analysis.
My first reading says that that is an estimate for the misallocation of resources during slavery. The pie (surplus) during slavery was likely much smaller -- if positive at all -- if you properly take into account the costs incurred by the enslaved. That runs counter to the notion that slavery was profitable in aggregate as it was profitable for all slave owners combined i.e. private profits. Those prior estimates of private profitability do not take into account the social costs of resource misallocation. I may have misunderstood and will read again.
I'll agree that the profession has not (according to MY utility function) shown enough interest in "distribution" as opposed to "efficiency," but I'd argue that it for three reasons.
a) It is, with the tools and data available, more difficult to know who will benefit from an economic policy change (even if we are willing to value income differently according to the person to whom it accrues) than how much the aggregate of the net benefits and costs will be.
b) Historically the profession developed considering economic policy changes -- elimination of the Corn Laws in England or the parody "Petition of Candle Makers" the being prototypical examples where there seemed to be no tradeoff between distribution and efficiency. The idea that the rabble would seize control of the state and transfer income to themselves in inefficiently leaky buckets is a recent and still largely fantastical notion.
c) Although full distribution effects are harder that measuring total net benefits, there are often immediate, visible, and highly concentrated distributional effects for self-identified groups that policy makers may seize on that DO have widely distributed aggregate costs. Banging on the aggregate efficiency drum is a useful reflex.
My criticism of the profession is rather that it has been too timid about advancing efficiency arguments, accepting too easily the Overton window of the day. Merit based immigration, deficit reduction, the tax code from top to bottom, health insurance, taxation of net CO2 emissions, congestion and use pricing of streets and roads, pricing of water rights, urban land use regulations and building codes, cost-benefit analysis of regulation in general deserve more green-eyeshade economic analysis.
My first reading says that that is an estimate for the misallocation of resources during slavery. The pie (surplus) during slavery was likely much smaller -- if positive at all -- if you properly take into account the costs incurred by the enslaved. That runs counter to the notion that slavery was profitable in aggregate as it was profitable for all slave owners combined i.e. private profits. Those prior estimates of private profitability do not take into account the social costs of resource misallocation. I may have misunderstood and will read again.