Waters Economics’ Colin Arnott, along with Margot Salomon, Associate Professor at the London School of Economics, have published a paper on the value of human rights in economic development decision-making. The paper draws on Colin’s 30 years experience as an international development economist to examine how the normative judgments of human rights might be integrated into neoclassical welfare economic approaches used in international development to improve decision-making.

The paper targets international organisations that, in the absence of alternative frameworks, tend to use conventional welfare economic criteria of economic efficiency and aggregate social utility in making value judgments. All very well in theory, but these criteria are difficult to apply in practice and lack the ethical basis that human rights can bring to making choices in development decision making.

The paper was selected as the lead article in Routledge’s inaugural published edition of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights in 2014.